Why They Run the Way They Do: Stories by Susan Perabo

Author:Susan Perabo [Perabo, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2016-02-16T03:00:00+00:00

END OF DAYS

We had finished up our graduate work some time ago, more than one year, less than five. Now it was May again and a new group was marching off into the world with their theses (they called them books, but we knew better) clutched warmly to their breasts. Some of them had secured jobs and others were pursuing additional meaningless degrees and we mocked and insulted each one of them as Rob’s Ford Escort station wagon soared boldly through the night on the back roads of northwest Arkansas on the way to the next battered newspaper tube. This had been Rob’s job for three months, his most recent in a string of positions that could have been handled with ease by a crack-smoking seventeen-year-old. Andy and I had joined him on his route this night because, for one, we were all best friends, and for two, we needed a new experience to rehash in the coming months.

“Dibs on this story,” Andy said from the backseat. Andy was really a poet (thus, the backseat) but like all poets he had a fat notebook full of story ideas that he was certain he would someday write.

“It’s my crap job,” Rob said, lighting a cigarette. “So it’s my story.”

“I hate stories about writers,” I said, slugging from the extra-large coffee Andy had brought me from the bagel place where he worked. “You know who never wrote a story about a writer? Chekhov. He didn’t—”

“It’s not going to be about a writer,” Rob said. “It’s about a guy who has a retarded brother and the retarded brother wants to help the guy deliver his newspapers, so finally the guy lets him come along and when he gets out of the car to take a piss the retarded brother drives off with the car and all the newspapers.”

“Then what?” Andy asked.

“Then nothing,” Rob said. “That’s the end.”

“Did you already write it?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “Because it sucks.”

I took a smoke from his pack of off-brand cigarettes; they were so cheap they didn’t even have a name. Back when we were in the program, living large off our stipends, it was Marlboros and Camels all the way. But no more. What money we had went toward five-dollar pitchers at Buzzards, three or four nights a week. When even that was more than we could afford, we hung out in Andy’s windowless apartment, watching fifty-cent rentals from Blockbuster. For a while Andy’s girlfriend watched with us, but she had been gone a while now, six months, maybe a year.

“Somebody already wrote that story anyway,” Andy said. “I read something just like that in a Best American.”

“You did not,” Rob said.

“I did. That whole retarded brother thing. It’s like a Denis Johnson or a Rick Bass story or—”

“I hate Rick Bass,” I said. “I hate that guy.”

“You just hate him because he called you out when he was here,” Rob said.

“What did he say again?” Andy asked, leaning into the front seat, like he hadn’t heard the story a hundred and eighty-five times before.

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