The power returned before Bel left the apartment, which was cause for minor relief as it meant that he wouldn’t be leaving Mephisto alone with nothing to keep the temperature in his vivarium regulated. Bel wasn’t planning on being gone for any substantial length of time, but he still didn’t like the idea of leaving the snake uncomfortable.
Fifteen minutes and a half a mile later, though, and Bel was standing in line at the Plaid Pantry, waiting for his turn in the queue. Ahead of him were three others, a younger guy with a six-pack of some macro brew IPA, another guy, a little older than Bel, with a cold microwave burrito and Zero Sugar Sprite, and then, of course, there was the reason that all of them hadn’t been able to pay for their shit yet; the obligatory lottery scratcher.
Bel sighed. He understood why people played the lotto. He’d done it a few times, and he got it. But why did they insist on scratching their ticket at the counter? Just take the ticket, move aside, scratch, and then, if you win, get back in line. Bel sighed again. Maybe on another day, he would have said something, or cleared his throat, or chucked a candy bar at the guy, but not today. Today was a day for eye-daggers and breathy sighs.
Behind the counter, the clerk looked like how Bel felt. He was over it. Bel had seen that look before—In kitchens. It was the thousand-yard stare that every retail worker and customer facing employee earned through sweat and blood. He’d seen servers walk back to the pass through to grab an order and just stand there, face blank, eyes glazed. Bel smiled. It wasn’t funny, but it reminded him of kitchen work. It was what he liked. He enjoyed making food. He liked cursing and swearing and yelling and throwing tongs into the dish pit in the middle of a rush because he dropped them and he didn’t have another clean pair. He missed the rush of it all, and the emotions. Shoulder to shoulder with some other cook, sweating cocaine covered in an artificial tan of cigarette tar and hot grease. And then, at the end of the night, you don’t say a word. You clean up, clock out, and crack a beer. There are three sips and half a cigarette before anything is spoken. Three long, silent sips. Three long, silent drags. Then someone always says it first.
“Fuck.”
And everyone laughs. Not because it was funny, but because it’s all you have left.
That’s the kitchen that Bel missed. He sighed again, and the line moved forward a step.
By the time Bel was at the front, he was sure the Snickers bar in his hand was melted, and the Red Bull was warm. He put them on the counter and looked at the laptop propped up on a chair next to the clerk. Instinctively, he looked behind himself, but there wasn’t anyone else in line. The laptop was looping a video from NPR’s homepage that showed footage of the earthquake. Seven-point-eight. Bel blinked. That was big, right? He couldn’t remember what big earthquakes were supposed to be, but that seemed like one of them. More images flashed through the video. A family of three stood outside of their house, the father pointing to a large crack in the exterior. Then another of firefighters and paramedics moving at pace through one of the lower income areas in south Portland. The camera cut away before they showed any bodies.
“Crazy, right?” The clerk looked at Bel.
Bel shook his head and met the clerk’s gaze. “Yeah. That’s the third one, right? And they’re getting worse?”
The clerk seemed excited to have someone to talk to, and the glazed over look from minutes before had all but vanished. “Yeah, sixteen dead in today’s, and twenty-four in total over the last three days.”
Bel tapped his phone to the register, and it beeped his payment.
“You need a bag?” The clerk reached to grab one of the small paper sacks beside him.
“Nah, I’m good.” Bel looked at where the clerk had moved his hand and saw a small zine. He hadn’t seen one of those in a long time. Some hand made, home printed half-sheet magazine. The title read Today I Learned in retro lettering that reminded Bel of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, or some other 1920s pulp logo.
The clerk must have followed his eyes, because he grabbed the zine and held it up. “This one’s mine.”
Bel was confused and a little taken aback. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know it was yours. I wasn’t gonna take it or anything.”
The clerk apologized, “Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant I made it. It’s my zine. You want a copy?”
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Bel chuckled. “Uh, yeah, sure. I haven’t seen a zine in a while. Thought they died out in the 90s.”
“I’m trying to bring them back. I wanna publish zines, and rage against machines.” The last bit was half-sung in the tune of Harvey Danger’s Flagpole Sitta as the clerk handed over the zine.
Bel took it and smiled. “Harvey Danger? Criminally underrated band.”
“Yeah,” the clerk really started to perk up now. “Did you know he was a music journalist up in Seattle?”
Bel shrugged, “No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, dude is super smart… but, umm, if you like facts like that, it’s one of the ones in the zine. Lots of little things I’ve learned. I thought other people might like them.”
Bel nodded and smiled. “Hell yeah, man. Well, thanks for the zine. I’ll give it a read.”
“No problem. And if you know any I don’t have in there, tell me, and I’ll put them in the next issue and credit you.”
Bel picked up his Snickers and Red Bull and walked to the exit.
“Will do.” He saluted the man with a Snickers bar to the temple and a nod.
He backed through the door, like he used to in the restaurant, and then spun around into the afternoon sun. The sky was the atypical blue of early Portland fall, like a calm before the storm of five months of rain and overcast vitamin D deficiency. A scent hung in the air, and for a moment, it reminded him of his hometown. Like barbeque and smoke.
“Excuse me, do you have the time?” A voice came from somewhere near Bel. It was buttery smooth, like a radio DJ.
He looked around, to his left and right, but —
“Ahem,” the owner of the disembodied voice cleared their throat.
Bel turned completely around to the voice. It was the old man from the sidewalk outside of Bel’s apartment. Bel recognized him immediately—brown tweed jacket, matching slacks, highlighter-pink Adidas runners, and… two baseball caps?
Bel looked again. Yeah. Two of them. One stacked neatly on top of the other. They were so well matched that it almost looked like one cap with two bills, but it wasn’t, it was definitely two baseball caps.
“The time?” The man repeated himself, though he didn’t sound irritated.
Bel looked away from the man’s hats, afraid of staring. “Oh, sorry.” He grabbed his cellphone from his pocket and tapped the screen with his thumb. “1:29pm.”
The man’s shoulders visibly slumped. “I see. Thank you.”
He raised a hand to the brim of his cap to further shield his eyes and looked up towards the crisp blue sky. And that’s when Bel saw them. Rings. One on each finger—10 in all—and all of them twinkled brightly in the sun, catching colors Bel couldn’t understand, as though they were made of prismatic strobe lights. Bel actually squinted in their sparkle.
“Wow.” Bel said it aloud, though he hadn’t meant to. It was just that the sight of the rings legitimately shocked him.
The man looked back down at Bel, as though he was surprised Bel was still standing there. He looked confused for a moment, but then realized what Bel was looking at.
“Oh, my rings. Yes.” The man held both of his hands out and flipped them over and then over again. “Would you like one?”
Bel coughed, and then croaked out a weak, “What?”
The man chortled. “Would you like one of the rings?”
Bel shook his head, half in disbelief and the other half in rejection. “Oh, no. I couldn’t take one. They are beautiful, though. I’m just not much of a jewelry guy.”
The man nodded, thoughtfully. “I used to say the same thing. Not much of a jewelry guy. I’ve gotten used to them, though. And others seem to like them. Are you sure you won’t take one?”
“Oh, no. No, no, no. I’m positive. Thank you, though.” Bel was still more than a little flabbergasted by the man’s generosity.
“Suit yourself. Oh, though, since you are still here, can you tell me which direction Polaris is in?”
Bel scrunched his nose. “Polaris?”
“Yes, Polaris. The north star.”
Bel exhaled. “Umm, I’m not one hundred percent sure, but if it’s true north, then…” Bel lined himself up with the road, knowing that it ran east to west, and then pointed up towards the northern sky. “It should be up there in that direction, but I don’t think you can see it in daylight.”
The man sighed. “No, I don’t suppose you can. Well, thank you, anyway.”
Bel was so confused. “Yeah, no problem. Have a good day.”
“Good or bad, it will certainly be one unlike any other.”
Bel had nothing for that one. It was one weird thing too many, and he just gave up on the whole interaction and started down the street back towards his apartment. He was still trying to shake the strange encounter with the old man from his head when he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He slid it out and looked at the alert on the screen. One new message.
Bel unlocked the phone and tapped the alert.
I just heard about you and Monica. Come get a drink.
If Mephisto was Bel’s best friend, this message came from his most trusted confidant, Sera. He tapped out a reply on the keyboard.
Yeah. I’ll be there in half an hour.
There was only one place Sera drank, The Glass Slipper. It wasn’t so much that Bel wanted to get drunk, but he knew that if he didn’t meet Sera, she’d just come over to his apartment and harass him, anyway, and he really didn’t feel like having anyone over at the moment. Truthfully, Bel didn’t want to have to talk about Monica at all, but he knew there was no escaping Sera. He tucked the zine in his back pocket, cracked the Red Bull, and ripped the top of the wrapper of the Snickers with his teeth. Time to face the music.