Circus in a Shot Glass Read online

  Circus in a Shot Glass

  Beth Overmyer

  Circus In a Shot Glass

  by Beth Overmyer

  Published by Clean Reads

  www.cleanreads.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  CIRCUS IN A SHOT GLASS

  Copyright © 2018 BETH OVERMYER

  ISBN 978-1-62135-791-9

  Cover Art Designed by CORA GRAPHICS

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  About the Author

  Logo

  To Rob and Debbie:

  Thank you for believing in Scotch from draft one.

  Chapter One

  Scotch

  2014

  Today I am, regrettably, sober. This allows memory to niggle at the back of my brain, the place I like to bury with a drop or seven of my namesake, because nothingness is a place, and I aim to visit it . . . someday.

  As the bell tinkles over the shop door, nothingness has never seemed farther away. This is somewhere, and something is the matter with someone. It’s him. Again.

  He, my boss of the three years I can remember, grunts in lieu of a hello. He lost all his hair before we met. Chemo, he always says with a laugh. Another joke I don’t get. Even now, I try to ask about it, but he digs into me. “Where were you last night, Scotch?” He leans in over the cash-out counter, his breath reeking of stale cigarette smoke. “Were you in the back, reading?”

  I look at the bottle in front of me. Then give him a one-shouldered shrug.

  “Don’t give me your lip.” He strikes a match, and the room is no longer the familiar Antique Boutique full of figurines of ladies in waiting, dogs with silver bones, or glass flowers that are “prettier than real life!” This shop is now like a circus, and my boss is its ringmaster. “Did Leo show up with the shipment of t-shirts?” “T-shirts” is said with a snicker.

  As he puffs his pipe, the earthy aroma of tobacco envelops me, and I stare at him. Tobacco keeps bringing back my aforementioned nemesis, Memory, and Memory is the last person I want to visit.

  My cheeks burn and the room spins as I recall a slew of sensations, all clawing at the inside of my head. Fear, sadness, emptiness. The last word rings truest as I stare at him and blink.

  “You’re more familiar than usual.” Does this make any sense? I’ve known him for three years, but sometimes it seems like longer, no joking intended.

  He laughs and puffs and stares at me. “You should know me.”

  “I should? I mean, yes . . .” Yes, I’ve seen him every day for the last three years, and sometimes he’s a bit familiar, especially when trying—and failing—to quit tobacco.

  There is no one in the shop, just us two. But, there is also a phantom presence. Something is missing, something I crave and fear so much I look around the shelf-crowded room, expecting this mystery object to appear. When it doesn’t, my wandering attention is snapped back by Ringmaster, who seizes me by the shoulders.

  “Earth to the nut job. The t-shirts?” After a moment, he gives me a none-too-gentle shake.

  I point to the back room where I take my breaks and make his coffee. “They’re in there.”

  He drops his hands. “You should’ve phoned me.”

  I reach for the bottle, which Ringmaster finds amusing, and glug ‘til my head stops throbbing. After a moment of drowning, I come up for air and begin to spew out a retort: “I would have done, but—”

  “‘I would have done,’” he says, mocking me. “Who says that, and what does it even mean? You’re missing a few nouns or something. Here, give me.” Ringmaster pulls the lifeline out of my mouth and dashes it into the nearest waste receptacle, which is full of paper cups and yesterday’s chewing gum. Nicotine quitting gum.

  With my mouth now holding a vacancy, I fold my lips together and sift through the change in the “give a penny, take a penny” jar. I would have done. The words made sense to me when they came out of my mouth, but now I’m not so sure. A shiver travels up my spine.

  What is wrong with me? Every once in a while, something foreign will pop into my head. I’ll roll it around on my tongue like an expensive wine and then spill it into the ears of whoever’s listening. Usually Ringmaster. And he often, but not always, will question whether or not I need a refresher course in the English language.

  The room has grown quiet because Ringmaster is trying to read his papers. But before long, he stacks them in neat piles on the countertop, aligned just-so with the “take-a-penny” jar. “Make any sales today?” Each syllable sounds like a joke, but I don’t understand the punchline.

  I let the other shoulder drop, and he belts me with a laugh that’s even shorter than he is, so it stings twice as tall. No, there hasn’t been another living soul for what feels like ages.

  I’ve tried asking him before where the money for the shop comes from if no one shops here, but he only laughs. And I drink. Scotch, for my namesake.

  There is a quiet calm in the mid-morning crush of shoppers traipsing by my small-town place of employment. Probably all on their way for coffee dates. Or tea, if there is any to be had. I doubt any are headed for the hard stuff; not this early. They stop in groups of two or three sometimes, stare at the sign and the window display, and move on again. Just as well, I tell myself. Despite the monotony of the silences, they are good friends to me.

  I pick up my feather duster and cloth and move toward the “prettier-than-real-life!” glass flowers. They sit there in a neat row on the table across from the cash-out counter, and I begin to wonder how many times I’ve dusted them for something to do. It’s busy-work, but they get dusted anyway.

  My rag was saturated before I began, and now the roses carry a light film of gray. I drop my rag onto their display shelf, and that is when the strangest of things happens: The bell over the shop door tinkles. My first reaction: panic.

  The customer is tall and earnest-looking and doesn’t see me at first, for I’ve rounded the flower shelf’s left corner and ducked behind the ceramic toadstools. “Hello?” the Englishman asks what one can only assume to be the gnomes. They don’t answer, but I do because I am sober-ish and that somehow makes it OK.

  “May I help you?” I rise to my full height, which places my head at right above his pecs . . . maybe. He’s too far for me to be certain. And I am unsteady on my feet, so I grab onto the shelf in front of me and hope I don’t start laughing like an insane person.

  He is a tall and frightened-looking thirty-something with dark, wavy hair and a thin, angular face. He stares at me like he wants to make a comment but doesn’t know me well enough to do so. “Hello,” the Englishman says, testing the waters apparently.

  I try not to stare, but he’s making such a display of staring at me like I’m missing a joke, I blush out of embarrassment for him. Is there some protocol for the handling of strange male customers? If so, nothing comes to me. “May I help you . . . ?”

/>   The Englishman seems ready to cry before coughing, smiling a pain-filled smile, and running out of the shop.

  “Come again soon.” Well, that was odd. I sigh in relief that I’m alone again. I frown because he is gone.

  But I go back to my dusting because it’s all there is to do. I save some messes for myself, such as the counter, as a treat. That I only clean when I am drunk and have forgotten my rule.

  The shop is boring, but it is all there is . . . I think.

  “Hey, ya make any sales today?” Ringmaster asks as he locks the back room door. As always, it is a joke, and still I don’t get it. He shoves a foam container of Chinese takeout onto the counter—my pay—and flips the shop door’s sign to “closed.” This small amount of movement has him chugging hard for breath. A fine sheen of sweat covers his brow and upper lip. “Well?”

  I give him a two-shoulder shrug, and he raises his penciled-in eyebrows. What more can I say? All I can think about is the food in front of me and my lack of food today.

  “What? You sold something . . . today?” The first word is laced with suspicion, the next three with irony. And the fifth and final word is panicked. Fearful for the safety of the food I am about to receive, I send up a silent prayer that he does not flip out and flip the takeout onto the floor. “Did they leave a card?”

  I unwrap the complimentary chopsticks—a bonus—and shake my head before answering. “No one bought a thing.”

  He is, if nothing else, persistent. “But someone did stop in, didn’t they? Did they leave a card?”

  Why does Ringmaster always treat me like I’ve got a screw loose? Part of me agrees with that assumption, but I keep it to myself. A business card? Who cares? “No, he didn’t leave a card.”

  And now he is in a state of full-blown anxiety, grabbing me by the front of my sage-green blouse and ripping off three buttons in his haste. Crumbs. I’ll have to bust out the old sewing kit tonight. “You little brat,” Ringmaster shouts up at me. “You’re always lost in your own fantasy world. I know they left a card. They always leave a card. And if you don’t find where you hid the card, I’ll box your ears.”

  This is quite a serious assumption, that he can box my ears. I mean to tell him so, but my lemon chicken’s getting cold, so I loosen his fingers and point to a random business card on the counter between us. It’s been there since yesterday, but it serves me well now. “There. There is the business card. Can I eat now?”

  Ringmaster, his face a blotchy red, removes his sausage-like fingers from my wrinkled and ripped blouse. Never one to be angry for long, he pockets the card, thanks me, and raps the counter with his knuckles. All of this anxiety and movement have him again panting for breath, and it takes him a moment to recover before saying, “You need to be more careful, Scotch. These cards that come in are from new distributors.” A moment passes. When he speaks again, it’s as though he is explaining things to a small child. “If we don’t have them we’ll lose the business. Understand?”

  I blink twice, which he reads as “I understand,” but it actually means, “I’ve got something in my eyes.” The egg roll is to die for.

  “Don’t let anyone in or out,” he says, the final joke of every night. In unison we say, “’Night,” and he leaves, locking the door behind him.

  Cross-legged on the countertop, I shovel rice into my face and wait for my imaginary circus bears to begin their drunken dancing as night throws its curtain over the scene.

  Behind the cash-out counter there is a short hall, which dead-ends into a violently yellow wall. Before the hall dead-ends into the wall, there is a door on the right that leads into a bread-box-of a-bedroom, also the color yellow. I am in the tight bathroom at the back of the room, trying not to think. Thinking is a third wheel to Memory and is not welcome here.

  I wash the day’s grime from my body and watch the lather run down my legs and swirl ‘round the drain before being sucked into oblivion. The water is tepid, so I turn it down to as cold as I can stand. Better . . .and worse.

  As I reach again for the bar of green soap, I hear voices out in the shop. I rinse the shampoo out of my hair posthaste, wrap a towel ‘round my torso, and step out of my tiny washroom. The water runs off my body and collects in a puddle between my feet as the room spins. “We’re closed,” I say to the two men with flashlights who are rifling through my things. Strange words out of my mouth; I am too disoriented to panic . . . so far.

  They are more startled to see me than I am to see them, but the one with the bad toupee gathers his wits and says, “So, um.”

  I raise my eyebrows at him and sway a bit. “Who are you?”

  He looks at my towel like it might reach out and bite him, swallows twice, and tries again. “We were wondering if James—I mean, has your boss left any . . .”

  The other man, short with a reddish stubble covering his head and face, also stares at my towel. He licks his chapped lips. “James never said he had a girl.”

  What the devil is he talking about? I don’t get to ask, because the taller, toupee-ed one nudges him out of my quarters.

  “Sorry about him,” the intruder says. “He’s a bit . . . ya know.”

  I nod like it is all right for him to sit on my bed, which I still haven’t made, and paw through my dog-eared copy of Fantome de l’Opera. I must be missing something. “Can I help you with something?” If this is one of Ringmaster’s associates, I cannot afford to be rude, as much as I’d like to brain him over the head with my French to English dictionary.

  Toupee Man steeples his fingers as if he’s about to pray. “You work with James. You’ve gotta know where he keeps the money.”

  My eyes narrow. “The money’s in the till.”

  “Till?”

  “Register.”

  My new friend nods and gets to his feet. “We tried there. He owes us, your boss. A lot of money.” He takes one last look at my panty drawer before leading the way into the shop.

  Still towel-wrapped and dripping, I patter after him. The scotch is wearing off, and my brain is being hammered and niggled to death. “My boss owes you money,” I say with a slur.

  The redhead is out in the shop, admiring Van Gogh’s Starry Night, which hangs on the wall behind my counter. “Your boss,” he says with a snicker, “is in over his stupid bald head.”

  The man with the toupee tsks and hands the other man a pair of latex gloves and a screwdriver. Apparently, there is a safe behind the picture, where I never would’ve thought to look. I’d always assumed Ringmaster was above such clichés.

  “Any idea what the combination might be?” the man with the toupee asks me.

  “9-1-1,” I say, my tone cold, for it has occurred to me that these men are up to no good. I am so foolish. No doubt I should have called the number the second I heard voices in the shop. Not that there’s a cellphone or any phone back in my apartment.

  The two intruders both titter like nervous nuns in a strip club. Perhaps they think it’s a joke, the combination I gave them, but my finger is serious as it flirts with the panic button on the bottom side of the counter.

  The redhead mouths something to his partner in crime, and they both laugh. The laughter sounds like a plea for the cops to come, so the button is pushed, unbeknownst to them, and I saunter toward the backroom.

  I do not like being mocked or played for a fool. “Have fun with the safe.” I make to leave but pause.

  Someone grabs the back of my towel, and there is a draft. “Hey, excuse you.”

  “Let her go, Vinnie,” Toupee Man says.

  “Yeah, Vinnie, let her go,” I say.

  “What if she tells James? Then he’ll know we were trying to take our sh—” He shuts up at once, and I yank my towel free from his grimy hands, exposing a bit of my backside by accident. Oh well.

  The other man snorts. “She’s as drunk as a skunk. She won’t remember a thing in the morning. Besides . . .” He eases the painting onto the floor. “Maybe James could use a word of warning. I—What’s tha
t?”

  In the near distance a police siren blares. The sirens of myth lured men to their deaths with their songs. This siren of reality has the opposite effect on my two midnight visitors, who topple over each other as they make a dash for the door.

  I don’t bother staying up for the resolution of conflict and subsequent balance of nature. I take a sip from the bottle, which was salvaged from the rubbish bin earlier, and stagger back to my quarters. My brain sloshes into a temporary nothingness before it hits the pillow.

  “Hey! Hey, wake up. Scotch, wake up.” Something cold and clammy slaps my face.

  I blurt out, “Sausages in the frying pan.” In my own defense, I’ve just woken up, and Ringmaster’s fingers smell of the fried meat. The lamplight beats down on me in sallow shades of green. I must’ve tossed my ripped shirt over the lamp before taking a shower.

  Ringmaster growls something about me and nudity and needing therapy. “For goodness sake, put your clothes on and tell me why you pushed the alarm button.” He turns his back to me, shuddering as I stumble out of bed and toward my panty drawer.

  It takes a moment for the cogs and gears in my head to start working again. When things start working the way they ought, I remember the two men from earlier . . . unless that was a strange, vivid dream. “They wanted money.”

  “Money?” He’s not usually this slow.

  The hands on my ten-minute-fast clock say I’ve been asleep for a grand total of fifteen minutes. Yawning, I take a disoriented look around the room. “Where’s the cops?”

  His eyebrows shoot up . . . or rather would shoot up had they not already melted away. “Cops? Why would there be any cops?”