Dirtbags by Eryk Pruitt Page B

said. Calvin felt an odd déjà vu pass through him. Hadn’t Tom London said those very words? Corrina continued: “Those who bring people down and those who lift them up. My ex-husband is the former.”
    Calvin’s arm involuntarily came round her and carved tiny circles into her shoulder blade with his forefinger.
    She continued: “He tore me down. I caught him with a cocktail waitress, and he turned everyone, including my son, against me. He convinced everyone we knew that I was a drug addict and stole my little boy. So sure, he tore me down good and proper, but the best way for me to fight him is to bring myself and other people up.” She nuzzled her chin into his ribs. “I won’t be like him. No matter what. He’s the worst kind of person there is.”
    “So you weren’t never a junkie?” Calvin asked.
    She was quiet a moment, then said: “We would get off work at the restaurant and have a bottle of wine or so. Maybe some cocktails. He’d bum prescription pills off the waiters or go hunt up some snow when he was looking to blow the doors off. But all of that was more his thing than mine. I just wanted him to be happy.”
    Calvin said nothing.
    “Short version,” she said, “is that I can be like him and tear folks down, or I can go about things a whole other way. I have to make a difference somehow.”
    She sat up and gathered her shirt and shimmied into it. Calvin pulled his jeans up from around his ankles and fastened his belt. He had no idea where the knife had gone. Once dressed, she leaned closer to him.
    “It’s getting colder,” she said.
    “Autumn is different in Texas, I guess. This really ain’t cold at all.”
    She stood and gave him her hand. He took it and let her lead him back towards their cars. Somewhere behind him was the knife, and he wondered which would be better: going back for it after she had left, or buying another on the way back to the motel. He did the math in his head and was interrupted as she stopped fast, just shy of his car. Stopped in the middle of the road and said nothing for a long moment.
    “Is everything okay?” he asked.
    “I don’t know what happened back there,” she said.
    “Me neither,” he said. “Everything is different now.”
    She turned to him and looked at him as if he may be contagious. “Do you know he calls me?”
    “What?” Calvin asked. “Who?”
    “My ex-husband.” Her jaw set firm. Those sad eyes bored into his. “He gets drunk on some nights and calls me on the phone. He calls me horrible names, all sorts of stuff, and you know what else? He tells me he’s going to have me killed.”
    “He sounds like a dick,” Calvin said. He moved her closer, to hold her, but she pushed him away.
    “I won’t be with another man like him,” she said. “Did you hear me when I told you that I absolutely hate liars?”
    He nodded. “I understand.”
    “You can’t lie to me.”
    “I won’t,” he said. He put his hands on her shoulders and brought her to him. They held each other there for a long while.
    “Then will you tell me something?” she asked from within his embrace. “And promise not to lie?”
    “Anything,” said Calvin. “Anything at all.”
    “Why does your car have Virginia plates?” she asked. “And why are those plates from a dealership three miles from my husband’s restaurant?”

6
    The dream mostly happened the same. On a sunny spring day, Phillip Krandall walks into Lake Castor High School, armed to the teeth. He steps into the office, just to the right of the front doors. Mrs. Medlin, the secretary, smiles at him. He shoots her in the face.
    The game is afoot. A few people get brave. Hector Vazquez, no stranger to gunfire, waits to see the principal. At the sound of gunfire, he rushes Phillip. Phillip wheels around on him and squeezes off a shot that clips him in the thigh then, for good measure, he puts one in each of his shoulders. Most other people duck. Duck and scream for help.
    Their cries are music, a