The femmy direction seemed like a safe bet, nail polish or makeup, which I knew zero about except that you won’t find them at the flea market. Angus would be no help. I did know what CDs Dori liked, Christina, Avril Lavigne. Pink, that was Dori’s hair idol. These were the things rattling around my skullbox the week before Christmas while I ran errands in town for Dori. Christmas shopping on the sly. She was particular about being the one to get Vester’s meds, but I needed the car for my mission, so talked her into letting me pick up their mail and checks at the PO, then Walgreens to get the prescriptions. Last stop, groceries. They only ever ate frozen things: Vester lived on Bob Evans mashed potatoes and Dori on Mrs. Smith meringue pies. I argued for chicken nuggets and such, to level out the food groups. But either way, you don’t let this shit sit in your car on a sunny day, even if it’s December.
So that’s where I was, waiting in a long line at the pharmacy pickup while gum-chewing counter girl with troll-doll hair had a discussion with a customer about her husband’s anus surgery aftercare. The old lady had on those clear rubber rain boots that button over your shoes. Mr. Peg called them galoshes, a word Maggot and I used as a standin cussword. You galosher, I will so galosh you. I owed Mrs. Peggot a visit. The pharmacy consult dragged on. The girl tore a coupon off a booklet on her counter and started drawing a rendition of an anus on the back with a ballpoint pen. Behind her was an entire wall of cubbies exactly like the PO I’d just come from. Those PO boxes were all stuffed with disability checks, and these with the white paper bags of drugs that the checks paid for. What if you combined the two and cut out the hassle, I thought. One-stop shopping. Across the top of the Walgreens wall of cubbies, they’d stashed the boxes of every cold medicine ever known to man that has Sudafed in it: Maxiflu CD, Drixoral, Sinutab, Flu Maximum Strength, etc. There must have been five hundred boxes up there. Not on the shelves anymore. Thanks to Maggot and his smurfer pals.
While I was staring at the Sudafed motherlode, somebody tapped me on the shoulder. Heavyset guy, small goat-type beard, glasses, too much hair for his head.
“Tommy,” I said. “What are you in for, man?”
Not drugs, he said, just a Dew and Doritos for his lunch. He caught me up on the months since we met at the drive-in. Still in his newspaper job, promoted from trash cans to doing stuff on the actual newspaper. Layout is what he said, setting out ads on the page to catch the reader’s eye. Making enough to move out from the disaster roommates into his own place. I had to hand it to Tommy, coming out of the foster factory as a decent human. I said the new beard suited him, even though actually it added to the whole effect of what was standing up on his head, but you know. Old friends. I brought him up to speed on Dori, and asked if he still had the girlfriend. Surprise answer: yes. Sophie was her name, sweet girl, still in Pennsylvania so they hadn’t met yet. Maybe next year.
The line started moving and Tommy had his ads to get back to, but told me to come visit. He wrote down his address and apologized that it wasn’t the house per se, it was the garage. No bath or kitchen yet, but they were planning to put those in. He rented from a really nice couple that let him use their bathroom. With four kids, that he kept an eye on sometimes. I could see this meant the world to Tommy, being part of a family. He said he read them Magic Treehouse. The little girl liked books, not so much the little boy that was into Grand Theft Auto, and the other two just small. Twins. The girl was named Haillie. Not believable. It was the McCobbs.
The first thing I asked him was: Is your room really a garage, or is it a dog room with a washer-dryer combo? I had quite a few more questions after that. Yes, a garage. Yes, they worried all the time about money but Mr. McCobb had started a business selling weight-loss products called Wate-O-Way, mainly signing up other people for a three-hundred-dollar fee so they could also be part of the Wate-O-Way sales team. Tommy believed with his whole heart that Mr. McCobb would soon be a rich man. He hadn’t seen any products yet, but they were supposed to be a whole new game in weight loss. Oh, Tommy.
He couldn’t get over me knowing these people. My long-lost fosters. I wanted to say, Tommy, go pack your shit, walk out of that garage and never look back. But he was all over this family. I couldn’t burst his bubble. I said I would come over sometime with Dori and we’d take him and the McCobbs out to Applebee’s or something, my treat. Which is insane. No idea why I said that. I wouldn’t have minded to see those kids, Haillie especially, to see how she was holding up in that FUBAR family. But the main reason probably was me wanting to eat as much as I could in front of them. I’d stuff my face, two burgers. Some form of weird revenge.