SPINEJUICE by Gareth Fitzgerald

“The date’s going fine, right? She’s kinda quiet but whatever, cute girl in a pink dress. No complaints”

I stared at the baby blue Toyota across the parking lot.

“She’s showing me something on her phone. That’s the first time I clocked it. Her phone is pink, and it has one of those dangly chain things, that’s pink, too. I’m, like, okay, she’s a girly girl.”

The car was parked in the same place it was before the weekend.

“Date’s going fine. Like I said, fine. She asks if I want to come over. Sure, why not, right? My car’s in the shop, so we walk out to hers–”

I’d already guessed it, pink. The bedroom was too. I didn’t know much about people, but I understood how a color could feel like a coat in the mean cold. The bathroom was pink, too.

“Even the towel!”

Why wouldn’t the towels be pink?

“Is this something I can call it off over?”

“Well,” the radio host answered, “this really isn’t something you can get over?”

I found that offensive for the pink girl. She deserved someone who warmed in her pink. The caller made a series of garbled sounds that amounted to “no.”

“And what’s so wrong with pink anyway?”

I let myself believe these surprise 3-way calls were real. It was the only station I could get driving down from the mountain. I listened to the pink girl defend herself to the caller. I felt sad for her.

A few other cars had parked around me. I turned off the radio first, just as the pink girl’s voice broke.

I stood over my desk, noting differences from the weekend. A Post-it had been used. The pencils were knocked over, but righted. People lingered over desks, catching up on their respective weekends.

I listened for whispers of “CJ” in any conversation, but no one seemed bothered by my missing desk-mate.

We went to high school together. CJ moved away, he went broke, he came home. He did that a few times. When he came home that winter, he experimented with a “real job”. He was happy to see me. He acted like we had been more than by-definition peers.

He brought up the Matthew thing on his first day. CJ’s parents babied him like mine did, but CJ hadn’t taken to it.

At 9am on the dot, the phone on my desk rang. My phone never rang, so I hesitated before answering.

“Davey! Happy Monday! How are you?”

“Oh, CJ. I’m good,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.

“Good, good.”

It was awkward, and I felt like that was my fault.

“Hey,” CJ continued, “any chance you could do a little favor for me?” I didn’t answer immediately, still confused. “I’m in a tough spot right now. I really need the help.”

I hadn’t meant to make him grovel. I refocused, tried to take in his air of certitude.

“Yeah, yeah, man. What’s up?”

He explained the situation. His girlfriend picked him up from work on Thursday at noon and drove them down to a music festival.

“I finally feel right. It’s been a while since I’ve felt so aligned. I can’t go back, Davey. Not yet, not now”

I had been unaware my deskmate was experiencing so much anguish.

“But they’re on my ass, Davey. They fired me this morning.”

There was an urgency in his voice that scared me.

“I’m worried about my car.”

The baby blue Toyota. He wanted me to drive it back to his house.

“The keys are in my lunchbox under the desk,” he said through a cough.

I could see him on the other end so clearly. He was under the awning of a trailer. Wrapped in a blanket because the mornings were cold, even though the day was hot, wherever he was. He was smoking something, probably hand-rolled, probably mixed.

“Alex took off.” He said it with a tone that said she had done something bigger than “take off.”

CJ had no suggestions for what I should do once I returned the car. He gave me his address and a few things to note about the car: there’s no aux input, the e-brake is faulty, and the passenger-side window doesn’t work.

“Are you ever coming back?” I asked, worrying I was asking too much. He was quick to answer.

“Yeah! Yeah! Lex just… needs space right now.” He moved the phone and talked in almost a whisper. “She’s never right in the head this time of year. Ya know.”

CJ brought up The Matthew Thing with a frequency and familiarity that scared me. My family pretended The Matthew Thing never happened. We never said it out loud.

CJ brought it up in a myriad of high school memories, of the few we shared. CJ and I were in the same grade. Alex had been 14. I agreed to move the car.

I sipped room temperature coffee from a break room mug that read But Did You Die? in bright, bubbly letters as I stared out at the parking lot. The floor-to-ceiling glass made me feel powerful, even two stories up.

The baby blue Toyota was sprinkled with pollen, a light dusting. My car shone in comparison. I had taken it through the car wash yesterday. It hadn’t been dirty, but I had a coupon, and nothing else to do.

CJ’s lunchbox stank when I opened it. Lunch meat left out over the weekend. The keychain was bulky. A dozen keys, something sharp, and a mini Magic 8 Ball.

I was the last to leave the office. Unreasonably nervous. Worried someone would ask me what I was doing.

The baby blue Toyota was low to the ground. I unlocked it manually and was invited into the warm, open scent of CJ’s life. I sat in the driver’s seat. It fit like a glove, though we were a few inches apart in height. The seats were tan, cracked, and colorfully stained.

I put the key into the ignition, keys and chains swinging and clinging.

I turned the key, and the car exploded in an orchestra of synth gunshots, galvanic reverbs, and jaw-tingling chords. The first few beats startled me to tears, and I cut the ignition.

Breathing heavily, trying to understand what had come over me. The sounds, I realized in the silence, was music. A CD left in. I was still crying. (It sounded like the Matthew thing at first.)

I readied the key again, this time with my hand floating over the volume knob. I turned the key slowly. Even though I was ready for it, it scared me. I was quick to adjust the volume and inched it up when I felt I could take a little more. This was the kind of music old people complained about.

Through the grunting, the grinding, the screeching, far away in the song, a voice spoke. I strained my ears to hear.

I reached the volume I had started at. I wasn’t thinking about the Matthew thing because I wasn’t thinking about anything at all.

Input screeching. Record scratching. I listened long enough, and I could see the shape of the thing. A sharp operatic that I felt in my teeth, the way I medium rare steak feels on a hot bite.

The address CJ gave me was four and a half miles away. He lived in the city, he’d said with a smile. I was interested in the task and didn’t think much about my return plan.

The sun was down, and I’d yet to pull out of the parking lot. The music glued me down. I thought I could drive it if I turned it off, but I couldn’t turn it off. The voice had come closer, the the voice started to sing. High and sharp, it didn’t sound anything like CJ, but it was.

The final track ended in an electric crescendo. I sat in silence for a while before I ejected the CD to get a look at what had moved me. I stared down at a blank disc with the words SPINEJUICE written in black marker across the top half.

I put the disc back. It started from the top with a bang. I drove up the mountain.

I got home late, my parents were in bed. I moved in slow motion, not making a peep, as I prepared my lunch for the next day.

I left early. I figured I would drop the car at CJ’s on my way, then get the bus in. But I sat in his driveway for 90 minutes listening to SPINEJUICE. Then drove to work, unable to separate the CD from the car, and myself from either.

A high-pitched voice squealed as she answered the phone. I worried about her age, but then she coughed, lungs old and worn. I asked the strange girl if I could talk to CJ. I explained that he had called me from this number yesterday.

“Hello?”

CJ hadn’t expected me. He worried something was wrong.

“Hey, CJ…Hey, man, how’s it going?”

“I’m alright, buddy.”

“Just alright?”

“Fine, you caught me. I’m fan-fucking-tastic. What’s up, D-Man?”

I told him I dropped the car off and left the keys in the mailbox, which I would do later, so it didn’t feel like a lie. He was not shy with thanks.

“I’m taking you for beers when I’m back.”

There was no subtle way to bring up SPINEJUICE. SPINEJUICE did not invite subtlety.

“...You left a CD in the car.”

CJ laughed wildly, but said nothing.

Over his laughter, I said, “It…fucking…blew me away.”

His laugh petered out, and his voice became serious.

“Really?”

I stuttered, “Yes.”

He was quiet for a while. I could hear him breathing and feel him thinking.

“Thanks, man,” he said, “that means a lot.”

“Are you SPINEJUICE?”

He spoke with a giggle still hanging.

“No. SPINEJUICE is my baby.” He kept going, “We bombed so hard last night, Davey, I thought they’d pull our set this weekend.

“You’re performing?”

“Something like that. They gave us a tent.”

CJ’s life existed outside of work, I understood.

“When?”

“Friday. Noon.”

Noon sounded early for a music festival, but really, I didn’t know anything.

“I can drive it down for you,” I offered with regret. Because what if he had said no? But of course, he didn’t.

It was a 16-hour drive. I took 2 personal days off work, last minute. I packed lunch. I listened to SPINEJUICE the entire time. It never got old because it so lacked order that I could not recognize songs. Making a copy felt like stealing, so I didn’t. I would ask CJ to buy one.

The grounds were muddy, and the people were scary, but sparkling. I could hear the beginning notes of “House of the Rising Sun,” but then it morphed into something else, something unrecognizable.

CJ was where he said he would be. He hugged me. His eyes were glassy. I wanted to ask about Alex, about The Matthew Thing, but didn’t know how. I held out his keys, and he asked me to hold onto them.

I met the girl who had answered the phone. She stood in the corner of the tent, wrapped in a blanket, smoking a cigarette. I worried about the flammability of the fabric, but didn’t say. I said “hi”, screaming over CJ’s exploding feedback.

“What’s your favorite color?” I asked her.

“Yellow,” she squeaked with a smile, “you?”

“Pink,” I said.

Author:

Gareth Fitzgerald is a writer and librarian from Upstate New York. Her heart beats for fiction, but she also creates video essays and vlogs while writing a weekly publication about food.