William Paterson

Faint Outlines

Robin tried to understand. She ran her thumb along the edges of the stolen lighter’s spark wheel. Though it was a job interview required to comply with the terms of juvenile parole, the answer seemed painfully obvious.

Because of the murder. The woman who got stabbed in the frozen food aisle by a total stranger and bled out while other shoppers just…watched.

“Let your words align with your truth, baby,” the manager said. The man looked pulled straight from the high fashion of New York City, perhaps a former Broadway star with long dancer’s legs, manicured nails, and a tailored black suit with pink shirt perfectly fitted to his lean body. With curly hair buzzed short and fading into dark skin, the man glowed under the fluorescent lights. A fallen angel to some. An ethereal creature lost in the doldrums of a Maine forever cursed to manage a supermarket, his name Marius now etched onto a plastic name tag instead of blazing through a hail of marquee bulbs.

Robin thought.

She sat back in the breakroom chair taking note of the lack of shadows. Everything blurred together, a single mass of nothingness trying to establish purpose in a world of chaos. Did he see it? Was he there? When Robin walked into the store and the automatic doors pulled open, she cut through an unused checkout lane and pocketed the first lighter she saw. She walked to the spot in the frozen food aisle. Her shoes squeaked on the place where it all went down and convinced herself that she found the faintest red outline of a once-thick puddle and stood silent to absorb the static energy of a place gone cold.

“You called me baby,” Robin said. The side of her mouth lifted into a smile even though she fought against it.

“Baby, I called my mama baby, god rest her soul,” Marius said. His caramel eyes sparkled, but beneath the surface Robin recognized something dark and deep, something pained and unforgiveable. He hadn’t been there, no, but he’d been other places. He’d also seen things.

“When can you start?” Marius asked and slid over the paperwork. He pointed to the line for a parental guardian’s signature. “You’re still a child, baby, and I won’t pretend we ain’t breathing the same air. I saw you in frozen foods before we sat down.”

Robin perked up. Often hiding behind large sweatshirts and jet-black hair, the momentary acknowledgement of curiosity and emotional depth stirred a dormant feeling. She took her hand off the lighter and placed both palms onto the table next to the application. Crudely trimmed nails caught Marius’ attention, a strained exhale lifting his chin.

“This weekend,” Robin said. Marius nodded and looked toward the breakroom door. Painted stone and cinder walls, a familiar feel. The laminated OSHA poster beside pulsed under the HVAC vent. Together in that room, both sat alone with dreams to come, and dreams laid to rest.

The loudspeaker paged Marius. Assistance needed at the registers. He stood, and the moment his back was turned, Robin forged her mother’s signature.

On the way out of the store, the automatic doors hushed open for Robin as Marius spoke with an older, laughing couple by register three. He raised his arm in a beautiful arc and pointed toward frozen foods, a single finger outstretched with undeniable poise and grace, back locked straight, shining black shoes balanced on a single toe.

*

Piles of unopened mail sat stacked on the table against the wall. Grease stains and remnants of spilled red wine pocked the floor like a crime scene. Robin’s mother sat at the chipped dinner table rubbing moisturizing cream from her neck to the place where an eyebrow should have been above her right eye. Three places had been sloppily set with water glasses half-full,

“Qu'y a-t-il en dehors du nid, mon petit oiseau?” the woman asked. The sound came out smoky and coarse, reptilian. She noticed Robin gazing out the window at the tree branches pointed like crooked fingers at the horizon.

Robin shrugged and looked at the mail stacked against the wall. Everything in life felt unopened and shoved into a corner, their journeys through time and space forgotten, traded in for passing glance of disgust and contempt.

“Another me,” Robin said.

“Chaque oiseau devient trop grand pour le nid, mais ils sont toujours l'enfant de leur mère,” her mother said. The strokes of the lather sounded like stomping wet mud beneath a booth, and the slosh while rising it. Her scorched skin made a mockery of the human face, but that’s what happens when a husband douses his wife with gasoline and lights a match. Futures go up in flames and the harsh reality of the world sets in.

“Some things are inescapable,” Robin said.

“Écoute, petit oeuf,” her mother said. “Les oiseaux qui tentent de voler avec des ailes non entraînées deviennent des créatures brisées.”

Being broken but free seemed better than spending more time watching her mother squeeze scented lotion into her hand and rub the coolness against disfigured flesh, or going back to the juvenile detention center. Wet like melted cheese on a well-done burger, or dry and flaky like the edges of a croissant, her mother’s skin had lost its skin-ness. In its place was an insult to nature’s design, a cruel trick, a half-head of long, feathered brown hair and another half of short, molted sticks.

Robin’s mother said true love was pain, and neither lasted forever.

At the head of the table, a seat that hadn’t been filled in years still was set for a homecoming. Robin’s insides raged hot enough to melt flesh, to scorch skin, to set fire to the beautiful half of her mother.

When Robin got picked up for shoplifting last fall, her mother refused to go to the station. She told the officers that her husband was due home any minute and she needed to be there, and if they had to – it was ok to punish her daughter. If the store chose to press charges, so be it. She needed to be taught a lesson, that stealing was wrong, that just because a person doesn’t have money doesn’t mean it’s ok to just take things.

The officers booked Robin and she spent three months in a detention center before a judge cut her a deal. She had two bunkmates, one of which got booked the same day. The girl they got paired with said she could smuggle anything into the center, so Robin asked for a cell phone. The other girl asked for some weed. Both wishes were granted, but the night after, the existing bunk mate sexually assaulted the girl who asked for weed. Robin secretly filmed the interaction to gain some sort of leverage and protection. She knew she was next.

But the following morning, the assaulted-girl got her hands on a splintered broom handle and sent her attacker to the ICU. Robin filmed that too. She posted the videos online under a dummy account and within a few hours, men commented on the footage asking for pictures of her feet. They said they’d pay. She showed the comments to her bunkmate after she returned from isolation, and they figured why not.

So, they sold pictures of their feet. Small, delicate toes against cold concrete. Soft skin outlined by bright orange.

During those three months, Robin made one-hundred and twenty thousand dollars. She set up a crypto wallet and took payments in bitcoin. Her bunkmate did the same and made close to eighty. They branded themselves as jail birds and bad girls. Soon, the whole floor was branching off and making more money than the guards, the warden, and faculty combined – none of which were the wiser. Too smug to believe teenage girls could pull a fast one, they never thought to monitor Wi-Fi and data signals outside of the library.

By the time Robin got out, she hadn’t learned any lessons about stealing. If anything, she learned that rules didn’t matter, that the system was broken, failing. An officer gave her a ride home when her mother failed to show, and the man told her that he never wanted to see her back in that center.

Then, he put his meaty hand down her shirt and smiled.

“Unless you want to, of course,” he grunted.

That night, Robin considered being in a relationship with an older man. Thoughts of stability brought comfort. She ended up visiting him twice. She sat for hours in the breakroom by herself until the guard took lunch. They shared a dirty cup of coffee, and he kissed her with too much tongue. It tasted like ash and decay. After the second visit, she no longer saw a future together and never went back.

The taste of him lingered in her mouth like a cancer. She went to the grocery store for stronger toothpaste and saw the aisles and rows of perfectly aligned boxes of food, drinks, and snacks. No one was around. A sign on the door said, “help needed.” A place so full and so empty.

At home, Robin went onto the site for work release positions. Lo and behold, the grocery store topped the list. The Need to Know section linked to newspaper articles about the murder.

“What would you say if I got a job?” Robin asked at the dinner table. It was less of a question and more of a statement. The judge ordered it, so really there shouldn’t have been any discussion.

Her mother scoffed and looked away. Chunks of malformed flesh dangled from the woman’s neck. Another stale conversation. It wasn’t about the money. Her father would send them checks until everyone just up and disappeared.

Forgotten.

Abandoned.

Checks came in the mail. Sometimes. But most times they didn’t. Work release only lasted so long before her father disappeared again. One day, Robin’s mother believed, the man would fly home and they’d be whole. Thus remained the faint outline of a family of wandering ghosts, invisible to the outside world.

Robin sipped her water and waited for the frozen fish sticks cooking in the oven to brown. In her pocket, the dull edge of the lighter pushed into her leg. She reached in, took it out, and threw the entire piece into the garbage.

Her mother didn’t even notice.

“C’est la vie,” her mother said, and put a dry cigarette between her lips. “Avez-vous du feu?”

Robin pointed to the trash. Her mother misunderstood and spat the cigarette into the waste bin, which landed soundlessly atop the lighter. A moment later, the oven dinged.

Marius made it his personal point to train Robin. The store had other employees, but they wandered the aisles to restock or rearrange items with dull, bovine eyes. Robin had seen this look before. Fellow inmates at the juvenile detention center lined up when told, ate when told, went back to their cells when told. Whatever spark had ignited their being had since been snuffed.

“FIFO means first in, first out,” Marius said. He stopped at the novelty ice cream freezer and surveyed the selection. The glass was so clean it barely looked like glass. Shelves of strawberry shortcake sticks, ice cream sandwiches, frozen push-pops, and pints of artisan ice cream spanned from floor to head-high, a capitalist’s sugary wet dream.

“Ok,” Robin said. Marius pulled open the door and the glass immediately fogged. He picked up a box of chocolate drumsticks and read the expiration date.

“Anything a week or less, garbage it goes, baby,” he said. “Want one?” He popped open the box and peeled open the frozen treat. Robin shook her head no, even though she did want one. Marius took note and put the cone in her hand. He peeled another and folded a single arm across his chest. His eyes said take a bite.

Robin put the stick to her mouth and chomped. Chocolate and vanilla melted across her tongue. Marius did the same without breaking eye contact.

“That’s good,” Robin said.

“I know,” Marius said. It came out high pitched and sassy, which made Robin laugh. He spun on his toe until he was completely faced away from her, the entire motion fluid and weightless. “Let me show you inventory and the Zebra device that can’t hold a goddamn charge because corporate forgot what it’s like out here on the streets.”

Robin chuckled again. She moved her foot in a similar way to see if she could also spin, but the rubber soles jammed against the tiled floor making a loud chirp. She stumbled forward and dropped the ice cream. Her other hand flailed out and streaked down the clean glass leaving a trail of smudges and oil.

“Sorry,” she said, picking herself back up. Marius turned on his toe again but kept walking backwards, a smooth moonwalk that defied gravity.

“Careful, baby. You don’t want to fall like that here. Not here, baby,” he said. He yanked a baby blue pocket-square from his front pocket and tossed it to Robin. She took the square and wiped down the smudge on the glass, then tried to hand it back. Marius stared and took another bite of his drumstick. Another chomp, and it was gone. Then, he disappeared around the corner of the aisle.

For the rest of the day, Robin learned all about delivery schedules, security camera locations, scanning UPC’s to help with ordering and inventory and balancing the registers, and where each pallet is stored. Marius pointed out the spill stations when a bottle of wine shattered, or any other liquid that needed cleanup. The breakroom had three circular tables with hardbacked plastic chairs, but sometimes, only when Marius allowed it, the staff could take whatever they wanted from the “expiring soon” pile to eat on site at no charge.

She took all of it in retaining details in bulk. Marius trusted her in a way she’d never felt, and in return, she determined to make him proud. Still the question lingered: what really happened in frozen foods? Was it truly just a random attack? Or did the plot slowly unfold like a season of television that refused to jump the gun?

“Are people bad?” Robin asked. They had been loading a cart with microwave dinners to bring to the floor. Chicken parmesan, country fried beef with cornbread and green beans, teriyaki stir fry – all to ready to nuke at 4 minutes on high for some lonely sap eating alone in front of the TV.

“People ain’t nothing but an echo of the hurt they carry,” Marius said. “There once was a boy. A quiet boy, shy, scared of thorns. Loved flowers, family had a beautiful garden, but them thorns - no ma’am. Cut too deep, drew too much blood. One day a hurricane tore the roots from the flowers. The boy stepped into the whipping winds to try and salvage his family’s work, but he got cut up. So he learned to move. He learned to twist and bend. He learned that there are ways out, and so he wiggled until he got out. Ya see? And the entire time he’s out, he forgets that there’s always a way back in, a deep hole callin’ his name.”

“Are you the boy?” Robin asked.

“Yes. No. Maybe you’re the boy. You got a daddy?”

“Yes. Well, yes and no.”

“So maybe there’s a different meaning, unner’stand?”

Robin didn’t. She nodded like she did, but she really didn’t, she just enjoyed the way Marius spoke to her. Teachers had too much judgment in their voices, the correctional officers seemed filled with slime and filth, but Marius carried a deep sadness that he held back from spilling over onto anyone else. Robin found this strength inspiring.

“Is there footage of the…um…”

“Don’t you dare say it,” Marius said. His stiff back hunched over, and his caramel eyes went dark. His body loomed over Robin, his large wingspan blocking the light in the stock room. Shadows spilled the floor unseeable to mops. “Hurt don’t leave a place. Sadness neither. Got too much of that goin’ round already. Whatever you searching for, it ain’t on them tapes.”

So they do exist, Robin thought. And wasn’t that the point? Watching them to understand why people hurt each other? Why people can love and hate for no real reason? Why daddys can set their wives on fire and disappear and still be loved?

Robin nodded and wheeled the cart out to the floor. Marius straightened. He fixed his perfect tie, tugged his sleeves, then lifted his chin.

“I don’t mean to be scary, baby,” he said. “I just want what’s best for you is all.”

Somewhere deep in her heart, Robin understood. Her insides warmed like a TV dinner nuking in the microwave waiting to be peeled open and picked through.

*

The routine of work and school created structure, dedicated times to be in designated places. Robin often came straight to the grocery store after work and hung out in the break room until her shift began, then – after punching out for the day – took her time leaving. As long as she made it home for dinner, her mother didn’t care.

After a few weeks, Robin started going into the grocery store on her day off to wander the aisles and straighten up the shelves. People hardly ever shopped there and something about the overly-bubbly music in the PA, the bright rows with no one shopping, and the reflection of the industrial lights on the polished floor became a meditation. Sometimes she’d see Marius on those days, and he’d look at her with a knowing nod. Some days, she wouldn’t see him at all and the store, though empty of shoppers, felt empty of life.

“Can you work an overnight?” Marius asked one day. Robin had just finished restocking frozen pizzas and was on her way to load up a cart with frozen fries and onion rings.

“Sure,” she said.

Marius straightened up and fixed his bright orange tie.

“It ain’t easy work, but I’ll go time and a half. The night team bounced and you’re the only person that cares enough to make it happen.”

“Ok,” Robin said. Her insides glowed. She realized that since she started, she hadn’t once felt the impulse to steal. Words of encouragement and praise from Marius became the new drug, the new thrill.

“You hungry, baby? Lets eat.”

He grabbed two frozen spaghetti dinners from the freezer and nodded toward the breakroom.

They zapped the food and let it cool. The room hummed with electricity and stone.

“Those tapes,” Robin said. It was the first time she’d brought it up in weeks.

“What about’em?” Marius asked. He placed a slice of soggy garlic bread onto a napkin.

“Why did you keep them?”

Marius smiled.

“For the same reason that you want to see them,” he spun steaming, spattered spaghetti around his plastic fork. “I lie to myself.”

Robin wondered if Marius understood, or if he was just saying things to try and dissuade her from watching the footage. There had to be a reason. There was always a reason. She blew steam from a limp meatball and took a slow bite. The heat nipped at the roof of her mouth.

Marius sat sideways, long legs crossed, back perfectly straight. His shiny, pointed shoes bounced to soundless music. Robin imagined his feet as perfect things crafted by years of care, routine, and elegance. She wondered if he knew how much money he could make selling pictures to weirdos online.

“When I was in the center, I watched my roommate get, um, hurt. Another girl did it. Fingers and stuff. Screaming and crying. I did nothing. The next day, the two got into it and my roommate cracked her head open with a broom handle. Blood everywhere. Sounded like a tree branch snapping in a winter storm.”

“These systems that supposed to heal us actually make our wounds deeper,” Marius said. He looked far away.

“Can I see your feet?” Robin asked. Marius snapped to the present and eyed Robin. He took a slow, contemplative breath before arriving at a conclusion. He slid off his polished shoe and slowly peeled the black dress sock. The dark skin of his shin and ankle glimmered as he teased the heel. Slowly, the sock stripped off and Robin couldn’t look away.

His toes were crooked and gnarled, the toenails cracked and split. All those years on his feet had left irreversible trauma, a mangled mess of something once beautiful.

“The answers are never what we expect,” Marius said, and slid his sock back over his toes, heels, ankle, and shin so everything could glide back into the shoe hidden and locked away.

*

The overnight happened on a Saturday into Sunday. Marius didn’t want to interfere with Robin’s school, and the two of them completed the job in three and a half hours. They barely spoke a word the entire time until everything had been stocked or stored. At the end, Marius grabbed a pint of ice cream for them to share in the breakroom.

“I want you to go home and get some sleep, baby,” he said, spooning small bites.

“I’m not tired,” Robin said. She held back a yawn and rubbed her eyes.

“Circadian rhythms say otherwise,” Marius said. “You did good work tonight though. Monday after your shift, swing by the security office. Maybe you’ll finally find peace.”

Whatever tiredness she felt erased and the heaviness in her heart lifted.

Robin left the store at sunup after watching a movie in the breakroom while Marius did payroll from his laptop. She had stretched out on the stiff couch and listened to the clack-clack of the keys while characters on the screen ran from an oversized monster.

“See you Monday,” Robin said.

“Rest, baby,” Marius said, and walked her out. The thought of her own bed never seemed more appealing.

Yet, when she pulled into her driveway, a pickup truck was in her spot. Her heart dropped.

He’d come home.

She walked through the front door to find her mother’s scorched face twisted into smiles.

“Ton père est là, comme je l'avais dit,” the woman said.

Robin felt ill.

“You got grown,” the man said, walking to the front door from the kitchen. He looked different than she remembered. A collapsed eye hung droopy in the socket beside a nose exploded from too many fights, or cocaine, or both. His beastly body filled the entire frame.

“Nous allons passer toute la journée ensemble,” Robin’s mother said. Then, she coughed wildly pointed to a glass of water on the table near the couch. Robin’s father didn’t take his eyes off Robin. He pulled out a cigarette and tucked it between his lips holding it in place with dry, cracked lips.

“Let’s eat,” he said.

The three of them packed into the front row of the pickup truck and roared out of the driveway. They drove for an hour before settling at a roadside diner in New Hampshire that boasted all-day breakfast. Though the sign by the entrance read, “Please wait to be seated,” Robin’s father brushed past it and decided on a booth before the server even realized new customers had entered.

Robin ordered orange juice and some toast. Her appetite was nonexistent under the circumstances. Robin’s mother looked over the four-page laminated menu like it was fine culinary cuisine before landing on a southwest omelette. Her father ordered The Hungry Man special – a towering plate filled with sausage, bacon, eggs, and pancakes.

The food came and the man wolfed down every bite, then ordered another. He wolfed that down, too. Robin’s mother watched and giggled behind peeling hands. While there were only a handful of other diners, it felt like a million judgmental eyes gazing through the open space at the freakshow in booth seven.

Robin realized that for her entire life, she wanted to be seen. Now, she wanted nothing more than to be invisible, to fly away into a place where the past wouldn’t return and stab her like a stranger in frozen foods.

The bill came shortly thereafter and, instead of paying, Robin’s father threw a tantrum about how the food was overcooked, and how long they had to wait for service, and how they were never even offered coffee. The manager, seeing the size and face of Robin’s father, decided to comp the meal and send them on their way.

“That’s how it’s done,” the man said in the car. Robin’s mother cooed and clutched his arm while he drove. They zipped all over New England crossing state lines, then turning back as though staying in one place for too long was a death sentence.

Robin felt her world go dizzy many times throughout the day until she announced she had to get back to study for a big test on Monday. Though it was a lie she needed a way out, a way to regain control of her time. Her father pulled over at a rest stop, let her out without saying goodbye, and asked how someone with all that school could be so stupid. The man peeled out, and that was that.

Phone in hand, Robin ordered an Uber and waited by the restroom where suburban dads away from their wives offered to buy her snacks if she followed them into the bathroom. By the time her Uber arrived, she’d had it with the day and once at home, Robin crawled into bed. She let the gentle cloud of sleep whisk her away until her phone alarm buzzed to get up and get to school.

She dragged herself out of bed with only the thought of getting through, getting to her shift, and watching that video.

The commute to school felt surreal. The outside passed in blurred pastel leaving streaks of memory in her periphery.

During period three, she accidentally dozed off and when the teacher woke her up, Robin apologized, focused on the lesson, and then fell asleep again. The teacher issued a detention. Too tired to protest, Robin kept quiet.

She got through the rest of the day with a shaky constitution, sat through detention as a teacher graded homework, then finally willed herself to the car to drive to work. As soon as the doors opened, Marius stood there with arms crossed.

“Something you need to come clean about?” he asked, tapping his polished shoe.

“I got detention. I’m sorry. Won’t happen again,” Robin said.

“You weren’t here. I got worried. I called your house and your mère answered. Baby, she didn’t even know you had a job. That ain’t her name on the work release. I got no choice here, child. We done.”

He pointed at the door and shooed her away.

“No!” Robin said. Her entire world collapsed, every hope and dream fading like the static at the end of a VHS tape. “Please! I need this! I’ll be good! I’ll be better!”

“Go,” Marius said. He was halfway down snack foods, but his voice rang louder than the delivery doorbell.

“What am I supposed to do?” Robin shouted. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Not my problem!” Marius echoed.

“Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do?”

Robin fell to her knees and wept on the floor of the near-empty grocery store. She bellowed and wailed. The sound bounced across the floors and got caught in the industrial ceiling like pigeons escaping the rain. She sat there, defeated.

Marius appeared from the wings marching toward her, his long dancer’s legs moving to the soundtrack of tragic life, a silent cursive, a pronounced grace guiding his movement until he was upon her, bent over her, cradling her.

They rocked back and forth while he calmed her tears. She held onto his arms. He held, too. They both knew the ending.

“I can’t get out,” Robin whispered.

“You in it, baby,” Marius whispered. “Just be in it.”

END

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W. T. Paterson is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire, and is a graduate of Second City Chicago. His work has appeared in over 90 publications worldwide including The Saturday Evening Post, The Forge Literary Magazine, The Dalhousie Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and Fresh Ink. A semi-finalist in the Aura Estra short story contest.