The Sabotage Cafe by Joshua Furst

Author:Joshua Furst [Furst, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-54494-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

AS SHE RACED along Fourth Street, angry shapes streaked past, places she hadn't ever thought twice about, coming at her like insults—the Mobil MiniMart where they'd stolen so many ham and cheese sandwiches, the lampposts and mailboxes mummified in leaflets, the faded, torn awning of the Nix Bar, the Chinese joints and the Green Tea Smoke Shop, all these places where she and Trent had spanged, all these bitter, insipid associations. The goodness was seeping quickly out of each of them. She tainted everything she came in contact with.

Maybe she should vanish, just cease to exist. What would Trent do then? He'd keep doing whatever. Nothing would change. He'd forget all about her in, like, five minutes. It wasn't even worth it to go to the cross.

But then, where else was there? St. Anthony Main? There was jack-all to do in St. Anthony Main. Or she could head toward Hennepin, wander downtown, but then she might run into Robert, who'd drag her home, who'd lock her up and never let her out again. She could climb down that drainpipe—those junkies couldn't still be hidden there, could they? Well, if they were, maybe she could score from them. Infect herself with whatever they had. She could go anywhere, but somehow each place would still be the same nowhere—nowhere worthwhile. Her too many choices made for no choice at all.

On the West Bank, she wandered through the granite and concrete plaza around which the University of Minnesota's arts buildings were clustered, and wondered, like she did every time she saw it, why everybody called it the cross. Okay, the different grades of stone were laid out in a kind of a quad, which, if you looked at them slantwise, she guessed, could be considered cross-like, but really there was no reason for such melodrama.

A handful of skater kids loitered in the plaza. It was a favorite hangout, a wide tiered bowl with a variety of obstacles for them to bounce off. Cheryl kept her distance. She climbed one of the pillars dotting the perimeter and watched them fuck around, skittering down railings and surfing along the arched ledges of the bowl. They competed against each other, picking up speed and popping their boards, flipping them back and forth on their toes as they leapt over tipped trash cans, then landing with arms outstretched and amazed grins on their faces. Or, more often, they tripped and tumbled, sprawling face-first on the vast pink granite plain.

A year ago, she would have been one of the mousy girls lined up like cheerleaders along the steps, pretending to be impressed by the skaters' prowess—or rather, willing themselves to be as impressed as the boys they adored were of themselves. Now she loathed these kids, the girls and skaters both, not just because they were blind consumers, their resistance a style, a fashion choice, another way to check out, but also, more urgently, because they didn't know how good they had it. They were poseurs, into the

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