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The Universe Is a Very Big Place

by April Aasheim

Giveaway ends June 30, 2013.

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When Spring Ryan leaves her carnival upbringing behind in search of a 'normal life' things start to get hilarious.

Does The Universe have a sense of humor?

This book is filled with quirky characters, zany predicaments, and lots of heart.

More Quirky Fun for 99 Cents

Just bumping my book...

If you like my writing give this a try. Its an offbeat love story about a woman, four men, her menopausal mother, a walking condom, and true love.

It will have you laughing (and thinking) the whole way through.

The Universe is a Very Big Place (on Amazon)

John Says Goodbye (Excerpt: The Universe is a Very Big Place)

Six

       John stood in front of his pickup truck, all his earthly belongings tied up in the truck bed under an old tarp. Before him stood his family and friends––the majority of the community––all of whom had come to say goodbye and to wish him luck in his new life.

"I can’t believe you’re going," said his mother, grabbing hold of him, her press-on nails digging into his back. Tears ran down her cheeks, etching rivers through her pancake makeup. Standing there before him John realized what a tiny woman she was and he was surprised he had never noticed. She always seemed so big, strong and capable, but as he hugged her goodbye he realized she wasn’t Superwoman after all.

"It’s not forever, Mom," he said, standing back to look at her. He could see the roots of her hair, grey with the beginnings of grow-out. She spent two Fridays a month at the Samson Beauty Parlor to maintain her natural color, but time was winning the war on her head and it would have horrified her to know.

"I got you a present," his mom whispered in his ear. She presented him with a package wrapped in pink and purple paper, probably left over from his niece’s birthday party last week. His mom, a proud Scotch-Irish woman, wasted nothing. No wrapping paper, bow, or even tape was discarded. Each was placed in an old shoe box ready to serve again at a moment’s notice. His family had been recycling long before it was fashionable.

"Open it now," his auntie called out from somewhere in the crowd, and his brothers elbowed each other good-naturedly. They were obviously privy to the contents of the package. John smiled and nodded, turning his head away from the sun.

"Ah, thanks, Mom. I can never have too many pairs of underwear." John waved the stack of white Fruit-of-the-Looms in the air, bringing laughter from younger members of the crowd and nods of approval from the elders. His mother squeezed his arm.

"That’s so in case you get in a car wreck you will always have clean underpants. Read them," she instructed, hiding her mouth behind her hand so that John wouldn’t notice her bottom lip tremble. John flipped the pair on top. On the back were the words John Smith delicately embroidered in cursive scrawl. "Me-ma did those for you last week," said his mother, nodding to his grandmother in the front row. "Even though she has the arthritis."

John walked towards his grandmother and gave her a long hug goodbye. She broke free and saluted him, assuming he was off to war because that was the only reason anyone ever left Samson. Generations of Samson men had died for the Red, White, and Blue and his grandmother lovingly sacrificed every one of them because that was the cost of freedom. John saluted her back and then he went to each family member and friend, shaking the hands of the men and hugging the women.

"Remember," said his grandfather. "Buy American, vote Democrat, and don’t wear colored bandanas or people will think you’re in a gang."

John nodded and grasped his grandfather’s hand firmly, feeling the heavy veins in the man’s thin arm. "I won’t forget."

John made it through the crowd, doing his best not to cry. Midwest men did not cry. When he had finished his goodbyes he made his way to his truck and watched as his mother turned away. She had said she couldn’t watch him leave. He waved once more and then drove, refusing to look back in case he changed his mind. It wasn’t until three hours later at a rest stop that he saw the card on the passenger seat.

 

Dear John,

You are a good boy. Losing you is like losing my arm. But if you really love something (or someone) set them free. And so I am. Follow your heart. I hope you find your adventure.

Mom.

Regrets and Renewal

From: The Universe is a Very Big Place

 

1986

Ernest sat on the queen-sized bed, its mattress old and tired, sagging beneath his slight weight. Lanie hadn’t been particularly pleased about this motel, but it was better than sleeping in the trailer again. Times were hard. People weren’t coming to carnivals like they used to. Theme parks were all the rage and the news declared them ‘safer.’ This made Lanie indignant. In all her days on the road she had only seen two accidents. Granted, one of them had taken a man’s legs, but that was still a pretty good track record.

"We can’t keep doing this, Lanie." Ernest sighed.

Lanie tried to ignore him as she manually flipped through the channels. Almost all static. Nothing was ever fucking on!

"You’re insane," she hissed, trying not to wake the girls. Chloe and Spring lay motionless on the twin bed, spooned up together for warmth. She could hear them breathing, the deep restful inhalations of the sleeping. "You don’t just walk into a bank and take money. It’s stupid. And illegal."

Ernest smirked. "It’s a small-town bank. I’ve been there a dozen times over the last few years. The security guard is basically Don Knotts. I get the money and we run away to Mexico and live like royalty."

She looked at him, her mouth agape. One thing that TV had taught her was that criminals always get caught. "Ernest, I’ve followed you all these years, but I can’t do this. We have kids to think about. We can’t be on the lam!"

Ernest punched his hand into the bed, trying to put a hole in the soggy mattress. It hesitated but bounced back reluctantly. "We are already on the fucking lam, in case you haven’t noticed! Half the f’ing carnies are 'on the lam!.' I didn’t join because it was 'fun,' goddamnit. I’m tired of running. I just wanna get enough money and settle down. This is my only fucking shot. Can’t you understand that, woman?"

They had been arguing about this for a week now, and Lanie thought he would forget about it, the way he forgot about most things. But he seemed insistent. She slumped down on the bed and placed her fingers between her eyes, trying to ease the pressure that was building in her head. He was serious. He really wanted to rob a bank.

"Ernest," she said. "I love you and I want you to be happy. If you aren’t happy here you need to go and find what gives your life meaning. I had always hoped it was me and the girls, but I see now it’s not. I love you and wish you well, but I can’t be any part of this." Lanie looked at her husband, absorbing him, knowing this might be the last time she ever saw him. He said nothing in response as he grabbed his duffle bag, already packed. He walked to the girls' bed and blew them each a kiss and then made his way to the door. He was really going. He smiled at her, opened the door, and left.

That was the last she heard from him, until a few weeks later when he made headlines in a local newspaper for attempted robbery. He was now serving many years in state prison.

When the girls awoke that next morning she told them their father had gone to see a sick relative, but when Spring saw her father on the newspaper as well, she turned to Lanie with a look that said she hated her. And it was three months before Spring said another word to Lanie, or anyone, for that matter.

 

#

 

Lanie lay naked on the top of her bed, three fans blasting air over her body. She had always looked forward to this time of life, the transition from motherhood to crone-dom. But her ascent into sage-hood wasn’t going as smoothly as she had hoped. Besides the hot flashes and the strange cravings and the weird fluctuations in libido (she would never admit this to a single soul but one day she had even found Sam appealing as he was stirring something in a bowl), there lay a nagging feeling deep down inside of her.

She didn’t feel like a woman anymore. Her eggs were hatched. She was on the other side now, beyond the line that separated the fertile from the unfertile, those who could produce and those whose time had passed. She would never have another baby again. Ever.

She willed up memories of Chloe and Spring when they were infants, tiny bundles of pink flesh, wrapped up like flower bouquets in knitted blankets. They smelled so good. Well, most of the time. And they looked up at her with something akin to godliness as they suckled her, wrapping small fingers around her own. Even her grandchildren did not show her that much love. No one had ever shown her that much love––the love of a child in its first years of life.

She squinted, trying to wring out the few memories of her own mother, but like a dried up lemon, nothing was there to juice. She had left Lanie in foster care when she was six and Lanie must have purposely destroyed any images she had of the woman. Either that, or she was getting senile.

"It all changes when they grow up," she said, returning her attention to Spring and Chloe. "All that admiration, gone in the wink of an eye the first time you forget a holiday." Lanie rolled onto her side, letting the fans beat against her back. The air hit a mole (that must be new) and created a peculiar pulsing sensation. "...We’re all judge and jury of our parents."

An image of Spring’s face in the dark beside her, asking if she had really been a bad kid.

There was a knot in her stomach, a memory knocking, wanting to be let in. Lanie tried to clear her mind and practice her meditation, but this one was insistent.

"Your father couldn’t handle you, and neither can I." She had said this once, when Spring was in the throes of adolescent rebellion. She hadn’t meant it, of course. Hadn’t even remembered it until Spring had asked about their father earlier. The problem with words was once you said them you couldn’t take them back. They hung in the Universe forever like wet sheets that never quite dried.

The real truth was that she wasn’t able to cope with raising two daughters on her own. And the fact that their father was never, ever coming back, and she might be alone for the rest of her life. For all her hellraising about women’s lib in the 60s, she hated to admit that being without a man was the scariest thing she could ever imagine.

"What I’d give for a do-over, learn a real trade, set a good example for the girls." Lanie gritted her teeth. The mole on her back danced in the wind. Maybe she should get it looked at. "I’m too old to cry over spilt milk now," she said, reaching out to stroke her pig. His plastic, hairless body gave her some odd comfort. It wasn’t a baby, or even real, but it was...something.

It was going to be a long night. She wished she had more of Jason’s insomnia medicine, but it was gone the first day he had dropped it by. She needed sleep.

 

     She was about to shut her eyes and give it a try when a flicker of pale light in the window caught her gaze. At first she almost ignored it, thinking it was just a ghost. But this ghost had an awfully big head. She squinted in the dark to make it out, and then her eyes grew large as saucers.

Sam's Rules for Sex

Sam walked over to the sofa and flopped down. Picking up the remote control he scanned the channels, settling on the Shark Week Marathon on the Discovery Channel. He smiled and folded his arms behind his head.

"I could make it up to you," Spring said. She walked towards Sam, obscuring his view of the TV She rolled her hips and touched her lips with her fingertip the way the lady did in that movie Lanie had her watch last evening.

"Pookie, you are in the way," Sam whined, straining his neck to look around her. Spring took a sudden step forward and snatched the remote control from his lap. With one quick click, the shark and scuba man disappeared. "They were about to eat the guy in the wetsuit," Sam moaned.

"You know Sam, call me crazy. But isn’t it strange to you that we never have sex?"

"We have sex. Remember Easter?"

How could she forget? He had come to bed dressed in bunny ears and a cottontail, fastened to his bottom with safety pins.

"Sam, I can count on my two hands how many times we’ve had sex over the past year. Nine times. That’s less than once a month. Doesn’t it bother you at all?"

Sam looked around, his eyes widening. "Shhh. Lanie and the boys will hear. Do you want that?"

"Lanie is the one who brought it up to me, if you want to know the truth. She wonders why she never hears anything coming from our bedroom. I tried to ignore her, but she is right."

Sam stood his ground. "Damn it, Spring. There are a million other more pressing matters in the world than food and sex...the only two things you seem to care about." Sam surveyed her waist as if to point out that her vices were beginning to show.

Spring gaped. Sam’s face softened and he patted the couch beside him, beckoning for her to join him. When she crawled up beside him he tenderly pushed the damp hair from her face.

"Sweetie, listen. We need to talk," he said reassuringly, as she sipped on the diet soda Lanie had left on the coffee table. "Lately, I’m getting the feeling that the only reason you are with me is for my body."

Spring, choked, spitting soda all over herself and Sam. "I’m sorry you feel that way," Spring said, holding back the laugh. Sex, even at its best, was lukewarm with Sam. He was so fussy about the way it was executed and he had so many rules.

Rule 1: One must always wear a condom, maybe even two. They did not even have to be the good condoms, such as those that were lubricated or ribbed for her pleasure. In fact, the less money spent on the quality of condoms, the more money that could be spent on important things like mochas and books.

Rule 2: Foreplay is a myth created by a matriarchal society to enslave men. Those days have passed. Get used to it.

Rule 3: One must never kiss one’s partner anywhere below the neck. Ever. You could touch someone below the neck, if you must, but your hands must not linger on any one body part for more than say, 30 seconds. You were being timed.

Rule 4:  The missionary position is your friend. Learn to love it. Experimentation is bad. Woman on top is heretical. God might come and smite us right in the midst of lovemaking for even thinking of this maneuver.

Rule 5: The bed only. Enough said. Refer to rule 4.

Rule 6: Forget any semblance of after-play either. Or snuggling. Immediately after sex the male must rise, steal the blanket, and shower profusely until all evidence of physical intercourse has been washed away. Then the male deposits blanket back down on the bed for the female, and sneaks quietly into the study to read before going to sleep.

"Spring, honey, are you understanding what I’m trying to say?" Sam was waving his hand before her eyes, trying to bring her back. Her eyes had glazed over. She had gone to that place she went whenever he was trying to explain anything important to her.

Spring nodded.

"What did I say, then?" He quizzed her.

Spring knew the answer by heart, even if she hadn’t heard the speech today. "That lately you think I just want you for sex. And that makes you feel dirty and disgusting and demeaned. That I should be focusing my energies on more important matters. That sex is trivial and only for people with no will power and no ambition. And should only be used for procreation." Spring tilted her head and looked at him for confirmation.

Sam tightened his lips and smiled. It was strained. "Well, most of what you are saying is true Spring, although I may have said it differently. The Lord wants us to have sex but only when we are married, and we are not married yet. If you do not have sex within the sanctity of marriage then you are saying to God that He did not know what is best for us when He laid down the laws of marriage."

Spring thought for a moment. "Do you think there’s any chance that God might be a She, Sam?"

Sam seemed taken aback as if she had said the most blasphemous words that had ever been uttered. Then, slowly he smiled. "You are so funny, Pooks! You almost had me. Give me a hug!" He took her in his arms and patted her head reassuringly. "There, there, it will be okay. We will get married soon. I have a date picked out now: July 21. Then you can use my body whenever you want!"

(Excerpt from: The Universe is a Very Big Place. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-universe-is-a-very-big-place-april-aasheim/1112331870?ean=2940014945189)

Lanie the Prophetess (From The Universe is a Very Big Place)

                (1984)

Lanie stepped outside of the motel room, a steaming mug of coffee cupped between her hands. She took a sip, letting the drink sit in her mouth for a moment before swallowing. It was decaf but it was still pretty damned good.

Lanie inhaled deeply, breathing in the crisp, fall air. Autumn was the very best time of year to be a fortune teller. Even atheists and agnostics came around to have their cards read or their palms glanced over come Halloween. Good thing too. Her wig was fraying and she’d need a new one. Maybe something long and sleek this time. Something Cher.

“Morning, gorgeous,” said Ernie, closing the door behind him. He was wearing jeans with holes in the knees and his knockoff Members Only jacket purchased at the Asian district in St Paul. “Let’s get some pancakes before the girls wake up. I got something to show you.” Lanie followed leisurely behind her husband as he hustled to the Motel diner: The Blue Moose Café.

“Where we going to anyway?” she said as Ernie opened the door for her. The restaurant inside looked very much like any other restaurant Lanie had seen during her years on the road. Red booths and speckled tables, waitresses in outdated hairstyles, and a jukebox near the entrance that serenaded its guests with Johnny Cash. A few of the roadies whose names Lanie couldn’t remember nodded at them as they made their way towards the rear of the place.

“Flagstaff, Arizona, baby.” Ernie said as he scooted into the booth. “Home of the Chipotle tribe. The greatest Indian warriors in all the country. More scalping per square foot there than anywhere else in America.”

Lanie narrowed her eyes and leaned across the booth. “Let’s make a deal, Ernie. You save the shit for the customers and so will I.” Ernie grinned and snapped his fingers at a nearby waitress.

“So what do you want to show me?” Lanie asked after ordering her hotcakes with extra syrup and bacon. Ernie raised his eyebrows but kept his mouth shut and Lanie was tempted to kick him under the booth. He never gave up his dramatics, even when they were alone. Finally, he reached into his coat pocket and produced a bloated white tube sock that clattered and clanged when he threw it on the table.

“Ta da! Once again the World’s most Virile Man has come through for the woman he loves. Check this out.” Ernest picked up the end of the tube sock and dumped the contents. Ten cent pieces scattered across the booth, some rolling into Lanie’s lap.

“You’re pilfering from the dime toss, Ernest?” Lanie couldn’t believe it. Ernie could be called a lot of things, but she had never thought of him as a crook. A crock but not a crook.

“What? It’s not like I’m stealing from the church bowl. These people don’t care what happens to their dimes once they toss them into the plates. The only thing they care about is whether or not they win the giant teddy bear. Why do you have to be so negative?” Ernie scooped up the dimes with his right hand and pushed them into his lap. The waitress returned with their breakfasts and gave Lanie a look that said she knew she was going to be paid in change and it wasn’t making her happy. Lanie returned the look with a helpless shrug.

“But what about Don? He okay with this?” Don was the owner of the show and had already threatened to give Ernie a booth at the far end of the midway, the worst possible place to have a booth, if he didn’t cut out his crap. This was Ernest’s fourth booth in the last six months.

“Pfft. I keep the books. It all balances out.” Ernie took a bite and considered. “They expect us to take a cut. We’re carnies, Lanie. That’s what we do.”

Lanie straightened up and looked at her husband. She was a gypsy. A witch. A prophetess. She was not a carnie. She finished her breakfast in silence and threw a five dollar bill on the table. “That will pay for mine,” she said, rising with the dignity of a queen - leaving her husband staring - and a few of the roadies gossiping.

Lanie walked across the parking lot, weaving in and out of the parked trucks bearing the slogan “The Bob Cat Carnival Show”. She waved hello to Maria, the Mexican woman in charge of one of the cotton candy stands who was pregnant with her 7^th kid and couldn’t find the daddies of the first six. Lanie took out her key and opened the door to room 133, the nicest room in the Blue Moose Motel.

Spring and Chloe were propped up on their elbows, watching The Smurfs on their shared double bed. Lanie huffed, wishing they would take advantage of the free HBO. She worked hard to give them nice things and they never appreciated it. “Time to go,” Lanie said, turning off the television. “Take a spitz bath and put on your clothes. We can drive through the McDonalds and pick up Egg McMuffins on the way out of town.”

Chloe jumped up and ran to her brown grocery store bag, digging for her favorite jeans. Spring quietly sat there, glaring accusingly at her mother. “But we just got here last night,” she said. “I’m not going. I’m tired.”

Lanie resisted the urge to roar. She wasn’t going to get into this with the girl again. Instead, she grabbed Spring by the elbow and pulled her up onto the floor. “You’d think you’d be excited to see all these new places. Most little girls don’t get to sleep in a different room every night. You two are the luckiest little girls in the entire universe. Right, Chloe?” Chloe nodded and lay on the bed, wriggling into her jeans. She had been making the rounds through the concession stands lately and Lanie hoped she would not need new pants any time soon. “Now hurry up. We have to hit Flagstaff before the snow.”

“I hate the snow,” Spring mumbled. “When I grow up I’m living in a house where I sleep in the same bed every night and there is never, ever any snow.”

“Be boring then,” Lanie said. “And see if I care.”

John's Decision

2005

“What do you mean you’re moving?” Pete was chucking rocks at an old tombstone, trying to lodge out ghosts. Fortunately for the sleeping dead, most of them missed.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” John said. “It’s disrespectful.”

“What are they gonna do? Haunt me?” Pete laughed but let the rocks tumble from his hand and onto the ground.

John shrugged. A haunting might do Pete some good, actually.

“This place is gonna suck if you go,” Pete said, pulling down his zipper, looking for a place to piss. He might have relieved himself on one of the headstones had John not given him the disapproving eye.

John took in the view of the cemetery. He and Pete had been coming here for the last twenty years and it pained him a little to think that those days would soon end. “I have to go. This place…it’s death to me. Death to my soul.”

Pete laughed. “Death of your soul, man? What the hell have you been reading?” He rubbed his nose with his hand, not caring that he had just held his pecker with that very appendage. “You just need to get laid.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Is this about Mara? I told you, it was an accident. You didn’t want her anyway. My dick‘s still burning.” If Pete were any other man in the universe John would have hit him. Mara had been a girl he really liked, but of course, like all the other women in Samson, she had a thing for Pete.

“It’s not about Mara. It’s about living my life. I’m 26 years old, living in my brother’s old trailer, working a dead-end factory job. I’ve never been in love. I’ve never climbed a mountain. And the only adventure I’ve ever had was getting lost in the corn maze at the state fair.”

Pete snorted. “Yeah, that was funny. You cried like a little girl ‘til we found you.” Pete let out a big laugh and slapped his leg. “You read too many books. But whatever you want, man. I aint gonna try and stop you from following your dreams.” John found this uncharacteristic display of Pete’s humanity creepy, yet touching. The two had grown up together and Pete rarely supported anything that did not somehow support Pete. “So where you gonna go then? Colorado?” Pete turned his attention on John, his tone more than curious.

John reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small section of the Samson Weekly. “No. There’s a recruiter in Evansville looking for people with computer graphics skills to work for a new company in Arizona. I might apply.”

“Arizona?” Pete’s words were heavy with disbelief. “You know how fucking hot it is in Arizona? Your pansy ass can’t take the Indiana summers, let alone an Arizona summer. Besides, thought you wanted to be a real artist anyway.”

John shrugged. “It’s a start and better than sweating away in a factory. And how is it you know so much about Arizona?”

“My cousin lives there. Remember Amy? The girl who finally took your virginity?”

John blushed. Amy had been his first real girlfriend but before the end of their Junior year her family had moved away. They say you never forgot your first love. Amy had been his only love, if you could call it that. On some especially lonely nights John still thought about her and wondered what she was up to.

“I visited her a few years ago during the Fourth of July. You don’t even need matches to start fireworks out there. They ignite all by themselves.” Pete laughed again and almost chucked another rock. He caught himself and aimed it at a scampering squirrel in the field instead. Fortunately for the squirrel, Pete had a hard time hitting a stationary target, let alone a moving one.

“Well, it’s gotta be better than this. You hear all anyone’s talking about lately? Harnessing the power of corn and cow farts to save the world. I want no part of it.” John looked past the tombstones, past the gate that opened to the park, past the houses and farms that sat just up the road. In his mind’s eye he knew every detail of this town: every house, every field, and every signpost. His mother said that someday he would appreciate the security of the familiarity, but he hadn’t gotten there yet.

Pete roused him from his thoughts. “Wanna hang out at the VW tonight? Jessica’s back from school and I bet she’s looking to get lucky. Can’t believe she went to an all-girl’s college. Anyway, you can have her this time. I think she’s bringing a friend.” Pete jingled the coins in his pocket and cocked a mischievous eyebrow towards John.

John cringed and shook his head. Pete had been with every girl in Samson. Twice. His claim to fame was that he had, at one time or another acquired every venereal disease the free clinic could treat, and a few they couldn’t. The last thing he wanted was to touch anyone or anything that Pete had laid his penis on. That was another good reason to move away. “No thanks. You can give me the details tomorrow.”

“Suit yourself,” said Pete, popping open the last of the six pack they had brought with them. “More for me. But remember, man. You can’t find adventure. You have to make it.”

John nodded, gathered up the empty cans, and made his way home wondering if his TV would be able to pick up The Wheel of Fortune or if it would be scrambled again.

Excerpt: The Universe is a Very Big Place - The Little White Stick

1997

“Come on, come on.” Spring tapped the little white stick against her knees, willing it to change color.

“I don’t think that’s gonna help,” Jason said. He was standing with his back pressed against the door of their stall, looking down at her. She should have stood too. It seemed like a standing occasion.  But after she had peed on the stick her knees refused to make the trip upward. They had just ceased to work. “If you keep messing with that stick you might skew the results.”

Spring shot him a look. “Since when do you use words like skew?”

Jason released his brown hair from the rubber band at the nape of his neck, only to gather it back up into a small pony tail and secure it again. He had done this at least a dozen times while they had waited for the results. “It’s one syllable. Don’t be shocked.”

Spring looked at the stick again. The little pink cross in the window had darkened, almost to a crimson red. She was not only pregnant. She was really, really pregnant. She thrust the stick at Jason and fell forward, cradling her knees. “Oh god!” Jason went to pat her head but she pulled away. “Please just stop.”

He said nothing as he squatted down beside. She could feel him listening to her, waiting for the sobs to subside. He had no problem fighting her, but he was at a loss when she cried. She took a deep breath to calm herself, a trick Lanie had taught her when she younger. She had suffered anxiety from crowds then, a job hazard for any carnie. “Breathe in, breath out,” Lanie had instructed her. “Find your center. C’mon girl. Stop breathing like you just run a fucking marathon. Slowly. In. out. Release.”

 Once she had calmed he reached for her hair, letting the baby fine strands of yellow-white ribbon slide through his fingers. She didn’t let many people touch her hair, but she let him. “I suppose,” she said, looking up at him with red, tear-stained eyes, “that purchasing a condom from a rusted machine in the lobby of Ed’s Guns and Exotic Animal Shoppe was probably not our wisest move.” She sobbed and laughed at the same time and felt a long line of snot fall from her nose. Jason grabbed a wad of toilet paper and caught it.

“You don’t have to do this alone. I’m here.”

 Spring felt the wail in her throat and fought it. She was angry right now, and she was afraid she would say something she regretted. “I just got accepted into Arizona State,” she said, drying her eyes on the back of her hand. “After three years of struggling to get through Community College so that I could leave this… life behind, things were starting to change for me. Now what?”

“You can still go. This isn’t the 50’s.Girls go to school pregnant all the time. Even on TV.”

"I don’t want to go pregnant!” She started crying again and she tucked her face into her skirt, smearing mascara across the hem. He didn’t get it. “I wanted to go…hot.”

Jason laughed. “Hot’s what got you into this mess, my dear. You’re too hot for your own good.”

Spring snorted and took the tissue Jason offered her. He knew her too well. They had been friends for years, but a few drinks and a slow night slinging cotton candy last fall had changed it all. Now they were bound together, one way or another. As Lanie would say, their fate strings had gotten all jumbled up.

“I got a crazy idea,” he said, pulling her up by the arms. He was a good six inches taller than her and smelled like French fries and Old Spice. “Why don’t we get married? We’ve been practically living together in my van for the last six months. Why not make it official?” He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. “Just think…you, me, the little Bambino, touring the country side together. If he’s musically inclined we could start a family band. Be like the Partridges. Only not so gay.”

 I could, she thought, nuzzling into him. He was safe and warm and familiar. She remembered the day her mother had picked him up on the side of the road nine six  earlier. “Hitch hiking to Santa Cruz” he had said, off to pursue his music career. He never made it to Santa Cruz. Once he learned how much money could be made hustling kids out of their allowance to see The Half Monkey Lady, he had settled in. That was the way it was here. The Carnival was one big roach motel. You check in, you eat a bunch of crap, and you stay until you die.  Very few people escaped. They had intentions of leaving, but one by one The Carnival took them all. Heart disease. Obesity. Drugs. Equipment failure. Dead by fifty, most of them. There was no fading gracefully into old age here. You just stopped. If it didn’t take them entirely it took some of their best parts. Just two months ago a young man had given up a limb to a roller coaster. He had climbed the steel mountain to fix a dangling bolt, when the car ran over his arm. They say he may have saved some people with his bravery. But the papers never heard of it. Bad for business. Now he’s quietly employed as the ticket taker at the back of the lot.

“What do you say?” Jason pulled her in tighter. “I bet I’m damned good at changing diapers.”

She took a deep breath. Though she cared about Jason, he had nothing more to offer her than his body, his guitar, and the eternal belief that someday he would roadie for Phish. “It wouldn’t work.” She whispered. “We’re too different. And besides…”

Jason released her from his arms and narrowed his eyes, ready to battle. “And besides what? Oh, never mind, I know. I’m not good enough for you.” He pushed through the stall door and into the empty bathroom. “Afraid you will end up like your mother?”

Spring lowered her eyes. Yes, she was afraid of that, and why not? It was a legitimate fear. But there was more to it. She followed him into the bathroom. “We just aren’t right for each other Jason.”

“Oh, I see.” Jason fell forward over the standalone sink, slamming his hands into the mirror. “We were right for each other a few weeks ago weren’t we? And even a few nights ago. But not for the long haul. No, Spring reserves that spot for someone more worthy. Am I right?”

 “Stop it. That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it? Don’t think I don’t know about that little fairy tale you believe in. You get one love in this lifetime and that’s it right? Don’t waste it on the Ferris wheel guy.”

 Spring felt her knees give and her stomach roil. She moved back into the stall and fought the nausea. It seemed too early for morning sickness. “Jason, please. There are many reasons we aren’t right for each other. You’re my best friend but…”

“No, I get it. What could I possibly offer you?” He turned the water on and shut it off again. “I hope for your sake that fairy tales come true. Or you’re in for a long, lonely life.” Spring heard him pull a paper towel from the chute, wipe his hands, and toss it into the waste bin. “When you decide what you want to do let me know. I will be there for the baby if decide to keep it. And I hope you do keep it.” Spring listened as Jason stomped across the bathroom and out the door.