Bubbly was not hot.
Business liked to hire beautiful waitresses and waiters so that, one, the restaurant had a charm to it and two, the waitresses and waiters made a considerable amount of tips.
Bubbly had been a waitress and had moved her way up to assistant manager. She was not just hot.
Which is to say that Bubbly was one of the most beautiful women in St. Robert- Waynesville proper. But somewhere along the way, sometime between when she requested me as her closing cook on Friday nights, and when I brought a two-foot cut blade, dripping with pizza grease and garlic sauce out of the cut area to face down one of her wild boyfriends, she became a sister.
She just wasn’t hot. Wasn’t sexy at all.
To me. But to the rest of the St. Robert-Waynesville area, she was one of the most sought after women alive.
She had married early. I’m not about to paint it all for you. Seduced. Impregnated. And stuck. Two kids. Twisted home life, and when she found out she was being cheated on, she walked away.
This was back when one assistant manager could support herself and two kids and still have a night life. And while she was designing her life, she found out that she was the closing manager every Friday night. She requested I be her closing cook, and as Heath Ledger’s Joker says, Here… We… Go.
It is pretty simple. The closing cook comes in at four. He runs the kitchen. He has to watch the dish room, has to make sure that the sauces are prepped and the boxes are folded by the prep guy for the next morning, and he has to make sure that after the crippling rush, everything is clean.
But he also has to get rid of his crew as soon as possible.
Labor rules demand that the extra crew is let go, but more important than that is the fact that all these workers under you are going to go to the club tonight. And every moment that you hold them to work is a moment they are not dancing, drinking, eating at Waffle House, and fucking.
Bubbly liked that I let everyone go as fast as I could. No matter how crushed we got at the dinner rush, I still had the crew gone quick.
Waitresses want out, too. They have a night ahead of them and they want to rush home, get showered, new makeup, new hair, new clothes, and out the door. A waitress who had her shit together could leave work and, in forty-five minutes, be at the club fresh and rolling.
It was Calm that broke that up. Shortly after Bubbly watched me with Calm, she started requesting Calm as her closing waitress, and we were off.
Calm had a perfect body, but it wasn’t about that. Her face was art, but it wasn’t about that. She had mesmerizing hair, but it wasn’t about that. It was the way her hands played across the big bowl of clean silverware as she wrapped napkins around it. It was the way she laughed at my jokes and only mine. It was the way she told me about her husband.
Calm’s husband was violent, and sexually assaulted her every night. Her husband was in the military on post, and her husband was violent because he didn’t love her. But they had four kids. She was stuck in the marriage. I loved her, and she was not allowed to go anywhere after work.
Bubbly made it so that me and Calm had time together. Calm would leave last and I would come to Bubbly and tell her what Calm and I had talked about when we folded silverware. I would tell her what I had written about Calm the night before. And Bubbly would let her heart break for me as my love for Calm grew and our hopelessness expanded to encompass my entire world.
Bubbly was the most sought after girl in St. Robert-Waynesville, and I heard about it every Friday. This guy was good, but this guy blew her mind. I do not believe in sluts. Just thought you ought to know. I think that guys are raised to seduce everything they are attracted to, and that freedom ought to be expanded to girls and women as well.
There is no such thing as a slut. You have all had way too much fun with that word and that concept for too long. What did I say recently? I think this was it.
Your body belongs to you. It does not belong to your parents, your friends, or your church. Your body was God’s gift to you. And as a possession of yours, it is your responsibility to use it as you see fit.
Something like that.
Soon Bubbly and I started hanging out after work. She had two kids and I was babysitting them as she worked the nightlife. I would go to her house on Saturday night and drop into her couch and wait. She would walk out of her bedroom in her bra and panties. Lace, silk.
“What do you think?” she would ask.
“You’re gross.” She was a sister at this point, a big sister, but the question needed to be answered, so I would say, “Anyone else would kill in that ensemble. But please leave.”
She would leave, and it was over. About a half an hour later, she is out in front of me with the hair, the makeup, the clothes, and the smile. She has her arms out at her sides and she is turning around.
“You look like a country boy’s wet dream. Now go. I have a movie I want to watch.”
She makes for the door. “There’s Dr. Pepper in the fridge and wash your clothes. They are getting gross. You are starting to smell,” she said to me.
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah I love you, too,” she would say. Then she would disappear into the night.
Then one day there was GP.
She came to me talking about him one Friday. He was coming to pick her up because he had dropped her off. His name was GP and he was perfect. You would not believe what he had said to her the night before. She had been out that Thursday night and he had come up to her and, while she was buying her drink, he had whispered in her ear.
“Do they miss you in heaven?” she said. “I looked at him shocked and he said, ‘An angel like you gone missing in heaven. They must be in a frenzy to find you. But here you are with me.’”
Yes. She fell for that.
But you have to understand, Bubbly had not ever been talked to with any seductive language at all. No one had ever said anything pretty to her at all.
The next weekend he showed up at the store and, when he did, he had a card. He handed it to her and told her he had gone all the way to Springfield Hallmark to find it.
This card was long. The words were watercolor. The pictures were slight and gorgeous. The writing was long and beautiful, and it was almost impossible to not be seduced by its contents.
“Oh my God, he loves me,” she said back in the break room.
“He bought that. He didn’t write that,” Shadow said. “He is a player.”
“What about what he said last weekend?”
“Listen, Bubbly. I’m not going to tell you how to deal with this guy. All I will say is that I want to be there. Let me be around when you are with him.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m your brother and I said so.”
She looked at me and smiled. “Done.”
She had bookwork to do and I sat down in front of him and looked at him.
“You’re Jesse?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the one that is going to warn me to be good to her?”
“No.” I locked eyes with him and he smirked.
“Then what?”
“I’m going to be the last thing you see if you hurt her.” I stood. And I went back to the table to roll silverware with Calm.
Me and Calm were falling deeper and deeper in love with each other and it was coming to an end.
GP, Bubbly, Calm, and I went to Waffle House the last night Calm worked at Pizza Hut. She was going to be beat for being home late, but she wanted to spend as much time with me as possible before her husband was shipped overseas.
I remember the look on her face as our meal started to come to an end. I remember that we talked for a while after all the food was eaten and the check was dropped off at our table.
Then Bubbly and GP got up and walked away.
She was another man’s wife, and though Guardian wanted to kill that man, there was nothing he could do about it. With a table full of dishes, Guardian began moving plates and stacking cups until there was a strip of clean table before us. He slid his hands halfway across the table and spread his fingers as if he wished to grab this place, this moment, and hold it always.
I guess even after 27 years, he still has. She extended her hands and spread her fingers, and we did not touch, but we wanted to.
“If things were different, I’d fight for you,” Guardian said.
“If things were different, you wouldn’t have to,” she said.
That is all I remember of her. Calm got in her car and drove home. I looked at Bubbly and GP, and I jerked a thumb at him. “He’s got to go. I need you,” Guardian said.
“Go home.” Bubbly said, looking at GP. “Jesse needs me and I can’t be with you tonight.”
“I can come with you. I’ll drive,” he said. “Just let him drive your car and I will follow him with you in mine.”
She looked at me and I shook my head.
“Sorry GP, you gotta go,” she said. “He is my brother. You are just my boyfriend.”
She let me drive her car. She didn’t know where I wanted to go. I headed for the bridge. GP followed us for a long time, but when he hit the Dixon exit, he turned around and went back to Fort Leonard Wood.
When I stopped at the bridge, we got out. I stumbled when I stepped over the line that marked the beginning of the bridge, just like I always did, and I climbed the tress.
She did not complain when I stood on the top of the steel bridge and howled. She let me stand up there as long as I needed to. Then I slid down and I took her to the end of the bridge. I took her to the spot where I had never spoken of.
“I said to Calm that if things were different, I would fight for her,” I said.
“I know you love her,” Bubbly said.
“I do. But that is not why were are standing right here in this place on this spot on this bridge.” I ran my hands through my hair. I had let it down after we clocked out at one, and now it was long and shaggy. It was disheveled and a mess. “She said that if things were different, I wouldn’t have to.”
Bubbly walked to me and hugged me.
I held her, and she held me, and for the first time, I realized what me and Less should have been. I knew what sisterly love was supposed to be. I held her at arm’s length and I said, “I want to give you a gift that I have never given anybody before.”
A story. I told her the story of the Leviathan of Devil’s Elbow.
And when I was done, she looked at me with shock.
“There was once a marionette that haunted my room, Jesse,” she said. “I would wake up and it would be sitting on my curtain rod. At the top of the rod in the corner. It would slowly turn its head and look at me.” She held her arms around her body and trembled. I walked to her and held her. “If you tell me that the story you just told is true, I will believe you. Just say it is true and I will believe you. I swear.”
“Why would I burden you with another story of wild and dark if I didn’t have to?” I said to her. “I just wanted to tell someone. You are the only one I can tell.”
GP and he is getting desperate. She has let him know that he is a friend. And he has decided they are going to be more than that. He can see I am in the way of that, and he wants rid of me. GP knows he can’t just hurt me or she will never talk to him again, but he is sure that he can take me. Sure that there is no way some Long Haired Fag can beat him, because he is a soldier and he has been trained.
Well one night, Bubbly has left her kids with her ex and she is at a club. She calls me and she sounds wrong.
She is drunk. But scared. I have her car and she is stuck at the bar. She can stay within sight of the bouncer until closing, but then she has nowhere to go. Her and GP got into a fight and she doesn’t know what to do.
“How many?” Guardian asks.
“Five.”
I look at my watch and last call is thirty minutes away. She is far enough where I can get to her in time.
“I’ll be right there. Stay near the bouncer. Do not leave. STAY NEAR THE BOUNCER.”
“Got it.”
I’m in her car and we are about to see how fast it really goes. That night, I drove stick perfectly. I pull into the parking lot with a skid and a growl of gravel, and I get to the door. I am not 21 yet, and I say I am picking a friend up.
“Sorry little man, but you can’t go past this tiny carpet unless you show me an ID with a 21 year on it.”
I look around. “Her!” I said. “I am here to pick up her.”
“Oh, you’re here for Bubbly? No, go for it man. Be careful, though. She is in a precario—”
I walked up to her and held her up. “Don’t throw up on me,” I said to her. “If you are going to throw up, then let me know so I can turn you.”
“Scared of a little vomit. I guess I am nasty and not your sister after all, huh?”
“I can’t fight when I am covered with vomit, and I am going to have to fight to get you out of here tonight,” Guardian said.
She leaned her head against my shoulder. “I love you,” she said as the door to the club closed and the silence of the parking lot fell upon us.
“Yeah, I love you, too. You gotta sit down right here.”
They were coming from all four directions.
“Don’t move from this spot,” I said to her. I put my back to her and scanned the parking lot. I saw GP’s car and I saw him in it. Guardian saw this as a perfect opportunity to make a statement. All he had to do was handle these five men.
I got her home and spent about an hour scrubbing the blood out of our clothes with my bare hands and a bar of soap.
One night, she went out with GP, and this will be the last time I see him.
She assures me they are friends, and he knows it. She is dating a truck driver and they are happy, but he is on the road a lot, and I am not 21 yet, and she needs someone to watch over her at the club and, blah, tee blah, toow beelck. She is getting in the car with GP.
I put her kids to bed and I wait. He will want to get rid of me. He will get her falling down drunk. And GP will try to rape Bubbly tonight. This is his last chance. He will make her pay for falling in love with the truck driver, and he is a soldier. Post will protect him. The army will make it so that it never happened.
Guardian is watching one of the Die Hard movies and waiting.
It’s one-thirty.
They didn’t stay for last call. He got her drunk enough that she didn’t realize he was taking her home early.
I open the door, and light from behind Guardian shows the driveway. GP parks at the end of it. He sits for a long time, staring at me. I stare at him.
He opens the door. “Come help me with her,” he says. “She is really drunk.”
“I’m sure you can manage,” Guardian says.
“What?” GP says, “You’re not going to help your sister to her bed? Some kind of…” he makes the air quotes, “‘brother’ you are.”
“I’m gonna need my hands free, I think.”
“Don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” he growls. Now, if he kicks my ass tonight, Post will defend him. If I beat his, then the MPs will be at my door in the morning. When he signed up for the military, he became military property. If I hurt him tonight, I have harmed military property. He knows this. He has mentioned it to me before.
He walks to her side of the car and grabs her arm. He jerks her from the car and she sways. He grabs her shoulders and supports her. “I’ll hand her off to you. You can take her once we get to the middle of the driveway,” he says.
“You can set her right down on the stairs, right here in front of me,” Guardian says.
“She said she wants to spend the night with me tonight. She said it while we were dancing on the floor at Rockin R,” he says. “One more night before her fuckin trucker drives off with her.”
“Bubbly?” She is shaking her head slowly.
“Set her on the stairs, or right there on the middle of the driveway, and get in your goddamn car and drive away,” Guardian said.
“Fuck you. She wants to be with me. She wants my cock tonight!” he said. He shoved her forward and she vomitted as she hit the ground. Her face landed in it, and he looked at her as I walked off the porch and flicked both knives open.
“What are you going to do answer to the MPs tomorrow?” he said.
“No. I will throw your fucking body in the car and turn myself in, but you are not getting to my sister tonight. Come on, GP! Either step forward or slither back!”
He did walk back to his car. He backed out, and I never saw him again.
While laying on the ground, she threw up a few more times. I picked her up and walked her into her house. I laid her in the tub and started a shower. I stripped her of her clothes and climbed in the shower fully dressed. I held her up, and she turned and wrapped her arms around me.
She wept and I washed her hair, her body, and her face.
She was easily the most gorgeous woman of her age that St. Robert-Waynesville knew, but while I took her clothing off, I felt nothing but care and brotherly love.
I carried her to her bed naked, laid her down, and covered her up.
Guardian sat on the front porch of her house with a knife in each hand until the sun came up. When he was sure no one was coming for her, he made breakfast for her kids. Put a Disney Sing Along Song video in for them, got into her car, and drove himself home.
She did marry the trucker.
I walked her down the aisle and gave her away, as her father sat in the audience and watched.
For more about the series Reality of the Unreal Mind, visit Amazon.
Jesse Teller 
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