Brothers/Sisters

I don’t see Ask until a few hours after dawn when I’m getting ready for work. He’s like a spider in this house; I can’t go anywhere without him being less than seven feet away. I catch him with one of Dave’s lighters, trying to fuse together a couple wine cooler bottles he found in the back yard. Whatever he’s doing, it isn’t going well.

“Hey, delinquent,” I say from the living room. Both my and Ask’s bedroom doors open into the living room, with Dave’s room on the opposite side and a closet at the end of the hall. Again, he didn’t shut the door, and I can barely see what he’s trying to do, made complicated by the fact that he’s only got one working hand. The bottles are placed on the carpet, rim-to-rim. Pulling on my shoes, I get up and lean against the doorframe. Dave’s still snoring in his room.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m going to make a tornado thing.”

It takes me a moment to realize what he’s talking about. “Why don’t you just use plastic bottles like literally everyone else on the planet?”

“Literally or figuratively?”

“Don’t be pretentious.” I tap my fingers against the counter, remembering Dave’s words. “I can bring you some when I get off work.”

Ask rocks back so that he’s perched on the pads of his feet. “Really?”

“Just give me the lighter.”

He hesitates, then tosses it to me. Arson crisis averted. For now. I find Dave’s keys on the counter behind a box of cereal, hoping he’ll forgive me for borrowing his car. It’s not like he uses it, anyway.
There’s a quick struggle as I walk around to the garage in the back and try to get the car out without bringing the rest of my uncle’s clutter out with it. This is somewhat difficult, since some of the cardboard boxes are leaned against the car, an oldish and hearse-like white block with a couple of snarky bumper stickers and a slightly rusted license plate frame emblazoned with My other car is the Starship Enterprise.

No, Dave, your other car is in the shop, I think with a pang of guilt. He didn’t seem angry, though. “Jeeps are notorious deathtraps,” he said, “so I’m glad you’re not dead.” No, and neither was Cherry. Happy endings all around.

So, the usual: start the car, have trouble on the hills, find a parking spot across from Jo’s and try not to get hit by an overzealous tourist in a white SUV. It’s always the Hummers. My phone buzzes as I push open the door, which is already unlocked. Jo is messing with the display in the front, next to a large and very obviously fake brown bear wearing a tie-dyed shirt and sunglasses; his name is Ferdinand. Jo herself has decided to bust out the crystals, and is wearing at least four quartz pendants that clack against one another every time she moves.

I move to take my usual position behind the counter—which has as many stickers as Dave’s car—when the person who’s already there stands and stretches.

“Morning, loser,” Jason says. He thinks we’re close enough friends to do that funny insult-but-not-actually-an-insult thing. I’m not sure why; Carina’s the only reason we ever talk outside work.

“Where’s Carina?” Jason’s taking out another box of granola bars. He looks like a thumb: he’s got close-cropped blond hair and a thickish neck with an equally as thick jaw. I’m not calling him ugly—he’s really not—but thumb is always the word that comes to mind when I see him. He should’ve been a marine, but I guess we all should’ve been something else.

“Didn’t she tell you? She’s sick.” Oh. The text. That was probably it. In other news, I’m a shitty friend.

“Oh. Uh, yeah. I forgot.” There’s another register near the fitting room. It’s dusty. We don’t use it much. And there aren’t enough customers to warrant it, but I decide to go there anyway, reorganizing whatever I can find. I rearrange the pens (there are two). I put the little LED flashlights in rows according to color. I even have the time to line up paperclips before Jo finally approaches me with something to do.

“Can you help Jason set up a tent for the fall display?” she asks. “I also want the logs arranged in a circle. And did you put the Chewbacca cutout in my office?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, addressing the first question before my brain can process the second. Aware that this may not have been clear, I add, “And, no, ma’am. I don’t know where the Chewbacca came from.”

“Mhmm. You don’t seem the type.”

I...kinda am, but I don’t say that. Instead, after a fit of mental groaning, I meet thumb-man in the front of the store. He’s already got the tent poles in his arms and is attempting to make them stay in an X shape; I’m reminded of Ask’s unsuccessful bottle-melting escapades.

“Here.” I take the poles, thinking he just doesn’t know how to set up a tent, but no. It turns out that one is broken. “Can you get the duct tape from the back?”

For some reason, he smiles. “Sure.”

I’m left struggling with the tent, but everything goes smoothly after he gets the tape. All we have to do, then, is make sure no one looks at the tent from the bottom. Or the upper left side. There’s also a small hole near the zipper.

We get a grand total of five customers, Jason and I taking turns on the main register. After the fifth (mine), Jason finishes hanging up the yellow flannels and leans on the counter, a little too close to me. My nose suddenly hurts, as if remembering the last time it was broken.

“Is the Yellowstone trip called off, then?”

“I don’t know. We can...reschedule?”

“That’d be nice.” My paranoid brain leaps into action: is he being passive-agressive? Does he blame me for something? I push the thoughts from my head. Well, I try.

I end up excusing myself: “I’m going to take a quick snack break.” I put a dollar in the register and take a granola bar from the counter.

“Hey,” he calls as I walk away. “Sorry about the accident.”

Accident? How does—

Carina. I open her message to find that she is, indeed, sick with “the flu or something,” as she puts it. There’s a picture of Cherry attached, the fat red cat lounging by a pantry door. When I ask whether she’s okay, the reply is simply “pharmacist parents.” I don’t bother her after that; besides, my break is over.

I’m halfway out of the booth when I glance out the window to a familiar blond ponytail weaving through a group of tourists, beelining toward Grizzly Jo’s.

The bell chimes. Wide-set and blond, Boyd looks similar to Jason in that generic white Wyomingite way. Well, Montanian. Same difference; the two states are just boxes on a map. Jason is more of the high school quarterback type, though—or maybe I’ve just watched too many 80’s movies.

Bias, I hear Dave say, is very close to unfairness. Be kind. It was one of the first things he ever said to me; I remember my child self making a sneering face at that.

“Can I help you?” I say, a little too sharply. And how did you know I was here?

As if reading my thoughts (don’t think of the Bond fantasies, I think) Boyd says, “You mentioned something about working here, and I needed to talk to David.”

I don’t remember saying anything to him about working, let alone working downtown, let alone working at Jo’s. I lean forward. “Why? Why couldn’t you just call him? Or Skype him?” I say it harsher than I intend, but I don’t apologize. Besides, Dave videochats almost as much as he knits, and often while he knits. I know for a fact that he prefers the company of screens to people.

“Could you tell me how to find him?”

I open my mouth to reply when Bernard shuffles out from behind a clothes rack to stand behind Boyd. “This man bothering you?” she asks, dark eyes glittering from behind red-tinted glasses. She’s a full eight inches shorter than either of us, but she carries enough authority to make Boyd take a step back.

“Of course not,” he says, still looking at me.

“The sign says no soliciting,” I tell him, turning away, pretending to arrange the flashlight display behind the register. The floor creaks and I hear the bell on the door again. Not long after Boyd leaves, Bernard is on me, marching around the counter to face me.

“Did you know him?” she asks, her voice low.

“No,” I lie.

“Are you lying?”

“No,” I lie again.

“Good—Wait, wait. You’re putting the four-dollar ones with the six-dollar ones. Move them over here.” Shaking her head, Bernard takes a flashlight from me and puts in its rightful place. They all look the same to me. A thought occurs to me, something about the fact that Dave got me this job.

“Ma’am,” I say. When she doesn’t immediately interrupt, I continue, “What did you do before opening the shop?”

She shrugs, but I notice how intently she stares at the display. “The usual.”

“Did you...didn’t you move here around the same time as my uncle?”

“And when would that be?”

“Mid-80’s?” I wager, unsure.

Another shrug. I should drop it; I know I should. Instead, I change tactics. “Do you the significance of the name Ask?”

A frown, this time. From the odd change of subject? Or recognition? I try to hide my excitement by dropping a light. “As in, the myth?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Y’know, this is the most I’ve ever heard you talk. Did the accident knock something around in your head, or what?”

Christ, does everyone know? “I, uh, have a friend. With the name.”

“Interesting name. I’d like to meet this...friend.”

“You can’t.” I say it without thinking. I hastily add, “Uh, he’s a foreign friend. From Norway.”

Bernard stares at me until I make eye contact, then says, simply, “I saw the damn kid, Garrett.” She tilts her glasses so that I can see the entirety of her dark eyes, narrowed in a how-stupid-do-you-think-I-am way. “You use a lot of filler words when you lie. Did you know that?”