Mea Culpa
by Carol Hinz
Lawrence University

Honorable Mention story in the 2000 ACM Nick Adams Short Story Contest

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 “He never told you the bus stop story? You’re sure?  You gotta hear this one.  Hey Jared --”
 “What, right now?  Shit man -- I mean it’s a good story, don’t get me wrong -- I just gotta be in the right mood to tell it.”  Jared leaned back in the beat-up maroon velvet recliner and tipped up his bottle of beer, draining the remaining liquid.
 “Sid, man, you on your way to the kitchen?  I could use another one of these if I’m telling the story.”  Jared waved the empty bottle in front of Sid before setting it down.
 Sid nodded his head and, not bothering to push the hair from his eyes, stumbled toward the kitchen. Ellie snorted.
 “Poor little Sid. He’s never gonna get anywhere until he stops tripping over his pants.”  She stretched her legs out on the blue-black couch and began absentmindedly pulling out small bits of stuffing from a hole in the fuzzing cushion.
 “Take it easy on the kid, will you?  And what are you doing to my sofa?”  Jared lofted a small pillow in Ellie’s direction. She dodged the missile and settled into a fidgeting silence.
 The heater creaked and clanged like an arthritic machine, working its way up to wheezing out warmth. The house had been built in the late 19th century and the old glass windows and the tiny cracks in the thick brick exterior let the heat escape during the winter. Jared and Dylan kept extra blankets on hand for their cold guests.
The lamp above Jared’s head flickered in a momentary power flux. During the course of the conversation, the last of the late-November sun had slid below the horizon and the shift in light had taken place so slowly -- almost imperceptibly -- that it had gone unobserved. The sole illumination within the room came from the small lamp bracketed into the wall above Jared’s head. An additional dim glow seeped in from the yellow-tinged streetlights outside, hanging almost level with the second story windows at the far side of the room.
 Sid reappeared with Jared’s beer and his own bottle of 100% NATURAL EXTRACT herbal infusion: CHARISMA. He presented the beer with a brief bow and slunk back over to the couch, shoving Ellie’s outstretched feet out of the way as he sat.
 “Hey --”
 Dylan cleared his throat and turned to look at Ellie, straightening slightly from his slouch on the beanbag chair at the far end of the room.
 Jared raised his eyebrows and popped the cap off his beer, taking a small, satisfied sip before reaching over to set the bottle on the old, water-stained coffee table.  He pushed up the sleeves of his heavy black sweater and, commanding the room’s attention with a magician-like flick of his hands, began.
 “It was early one night a while ago after I’d just got done with a shift at Joe’s. I’m sitting at the bus stop, not thinking about too much. It was a pretty mellow day and I figured it’d be a mellow night, too. Got my headphones on and Johnny Cash is singing to me. It’s all cool and the bus should be coming over from downtown any minute.”
 Jared paused to light a cigarette, taking a deep drag and blowing the smoke out into the center of the room where it swirled in invisible drafts of air. He glanced out the windows at the flickering street lights and shifted forward in his chair.
 Ellie bounced impatiently on the couch and took a sly gulp of Sid’s tea. “You’re sitting at the bus stop -- wait, where’s your car?”
 Sid looked her way and gave a poorly-aimed mock punch, grazing his knuckles on the back of the couch. “Ouch!  Now listen, girl. The man is trying to tell a story here. He needs some time to set it up. To, you know, get the mood right and shit.”
 Dylan cleared his throat again and began rolling a joint. With a flick of his cigarette, Jared called the attention back to himself.
 “It was a while ago -- I didn’t have my car yet. So I’m at the bus stop. Early evening -- 8 o’clock I’d say. There’s, oh, some fucking author called it ‘crepuscular,’ you know what I mean?”
 “Last time I checked, the sun sets at 5 o’clock.”
 “It was last summer, Ellie dear.  I’ve still got a few minutes before the 4E comes over from Hennepin and this chick comes up at sits down next to me. I’m trying not to look at her, but man, she’s hot. She looks about 19 or 20 and she’s got these cute pig-tail things and this nice blue little summer dress. I’m just like, ‘hey, what’s up,’ but I’m trying not to stare ‘cause I don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable or anything.
 “So then she turns to me. Out of the corner of my eye -- I’m still trying to look at her without her knowing -- I see her mouth saying something.  But Johnny is so loud in my ears that I can’t hear a damn thing. I take off my headphones, all casual-like, and I just say ‘pardon me, I didn’t quite catch that.’
 “She looks at me dead-on with these killer brown eyes and goes, ‘I was wondering if you knew where I might find some weed.’ I mean, what the fuck? This chick just comes out of nowhere and asks me if I know where she can get some weed. ‘Course I had some in my pocket -- I was on my way to jam with Treg.
 “But now you see, we’ve got a dilemma here. Just who does this girl think she is? And what do I look like, a fucking drug dealer? So then I start getting paranoid. What if it’s a set-up?  What if she’s some plant by the cops? You know, they dress her up all sweet-like and then send her out so they can nail us.”
 “Yeah, once I heard from my brother that sometimes the cops --”
 “Shut up, you’ll ruin the story.”  Sid pulled a balled-up sock off the floor and tossed it at Ellie, hitting her square in the forehead.
 “So anyways, I’ve gotta figure out if this girl’s for real. I’m just sitting there and I know I’ve got to say something, so I decide to play it cool. Real cool. I lean back on the bench and I go, ‘so what did you say your name was?’ And she smiles. This, my friends, is a good sign.”
 He paused for a sip of beer. This time the room remained still, except for Sid, who suddenly shifted positions and managed to knock Jared’s copy of Pnin off the arm of the couch. It fell to the floor with a soft thud.
 “She says, ‘May. I’m May.’ She takes my hand and says ‘pleased to meet you again.’  Again? What the hell is this girl taking about? This is looking more and more like a mystery and I’m thinking I’m just the man to get to the bottom of it. I reach down to my Walkman and hit stop. Sorry Johnny, but it’s time to give this girl my full attention. I take a real good look at her. ‘Meet me again? You must be confusing me with someone else. I think I’d remember if we met before.’ I mean even when I’m really messed up, I think I still remember a pretty face.
 “The chick goes, ‘we met a while ago. Two years, probably. I’m Cassie Darger’s younger sister.’ And then it all falls into place. Dylan, you knew Cassie. That little hottie from Southwest. The one who gave Rich Stromboli a blow job in the guys’ bathroom. Senior skip day, she had this party at her house, right by Lake Calhoun and we all got trashed in the middle of the day and played volleyball at the beach. It was so hot, we all ended up jumping in the lake with our clothes still on. But she had this little sister. She was like a sophomore at the time and she came to hang out after school. She was stone-cold sober, but she was playing volleyball for a while and she dived for the ball and totally got scraped up. Everyone was sitting there laughing at this chick, so I took her back to the house so she could get some band-aids and fix her up all nice. She was sweet back then, but we never really paid all that much attention to her.
 “But here at the bus stop, she’s unbelievable. And she’s no little sweet sixteen anymore.  So I’m like, ‘of course, the beach, how could I forget.’ She smiles and I smile. Oh, my friends, it’s a beautiful moment of connection.
 “We start talking about Southwest and what people are up to -- all that sort of thing. Apparently Cassie has some rich boyfriend at her school in California, so she’s livin’ the good life out there for the summer. Anyways, the bus finally comes and me and my new-found friend get on. The way she’s smiling at me, she’s gotta be into me.”

 

 
 
 

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