"Minor Alterations" a short piece of fiction by Nick Gregorio

Since the smoking ban, they don’t seat me in my usual spot. Let me rephrase—my favorite spot. You’ve got to catch the early bird on Sundays to be seated over there anymore; over by the big plate glass windows that look out on 309 and the car dealership across the way. The view, the lighting; it was all perfect over there. Although, when people would say 309’s not much of a view, I’d say the lighting was good. When they’d say the lighting was all hazy from the smoke, I’d say I like watching the cars fly past. It was just better over there. Now, there’s no smoky haze; just the washed out, flickering halogen bulbs lighting the room from behind smoke stained, brittle plastic covers.

“Warm up?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Mercedes grins as she pours my coffee. I’ve seen that goofy, gapped toothed grin for years. She knows my name and I’ve known hers since before the staff had to start wearing name tags.

“Whatcha reading?”

“Oh, uh, just another Camus.”

“Cah-moo?”

“Yep.”

“Looks like cah-miss.”

“Oh, yeah. Mhmm. He’s French though, so it’s cah-moo.”

“Sounds like a sneezing cow.”

“Those French—”

“Are weird?”

“Trying to finish my sentences, Mercedes?”

“Guess we just think a lot alike.”

“Sure,” I say, nodding, smiling, trying to get her to move on to the next table so she can warm their cooling coffees to room temperature. She smiles and does just that as I lift my coffee cup from the saucer it rests on to blow on it, despite the lack of steam, despite the fact they stopped serving hot coffee when the diner changed hands a year or so ago.

I’m not in my seat, not sipping scalding coffee because Michael, or whatever that miserable old guy’s name was, decided he’d become too old and far too miserable to continue running a sold establishment. Part of me wants to verify that the diner’s still called Michael’s by looking through my favorite window, in my favorite seat, at the sign that stands out by the road. But I’m in the wrong section and the name of the diner—along with some select staff members—is the only thing remaining that makes this a reasonable facsimile of the original Michael’s. I mean, even the french dip’s au jus is different; now there’s a layer of yellow oil on the top, like a greasy shield that prevents deliciousness.

I put my phone on the table. Just in case.

Customers continue to yammer; Mercedes, across the room, takes an order; Manuel flies through the kitchen door with a tray of food; I sip my lukewarm coffee, with my book open, face down on the table so I don’t have to unnecessarily dog-ear a page. Familiar actions occur; it’s still the same building. It’s still the same place, isn’t it?

“Hey!” Maria slides into the seat across from me.

“Hey, what are you doing here?”

“Just got out of work and I saw your car out front. I thought I’d stop in, say hi.”

I smile, “Hi.”

“Hi,” she returns the smile.

“What are you reading?”

“Oh, another Camus.”

“How existential of you.”

“You know me.”

“Better than I know Camus.”

She folds her hands on the tabletop.

“That’s a good shirt.”

“Oh,” she looks down and pulls it away from her skin, “yeah, I saw them last week.”

“Did they play ‘Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts’?”

“I wish. But, they played this medley with a track from Sink or Swim and two from the new one. It was…amazing.”

“I wish I’d gone.”

“You should’ve!”

“I had to work.”

“Pshh. You’ve called out before.”

“Too many times. I need that job.”

“They won’t fire you, your mom works there.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

A smile, a wink, “Knew you’d see it my way.”

I pretend to take a better look at the t-shirt design—I make my best effort to pretend, anyway. I just end up staring at her chest where the shirt’s artwork is being pushed in my direction.

“How long did they play?”

“About an hour.”

“That’s awesome.”

“Gatorface opened, too.”

I slam my hand on the table, sloshing coffee over the mouth of the mug, “Get outa here!”

“Yep. Picked up their EP.”

“Etched vinyl, right?”

“Absolutely

Again, here comes Mercedes. “Hey, hun,” she says.

“Hi,” there’s the smile again. I dog ear Camus and put it face down on the table.

“Can I getcha something?”

“Coffee and water, please.”

“Okay, great.”

“Oh, wait, sorry, can I get the french dip, too?”

“Sure. How about you, Cah-moo?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

Mercedes walks off, off to bother others.

“You know,” Maria says, “The Wonder Years are playing over at Soupy’s tonight.”

“A house show?”

“Yeah, weird, right?”

“They did a European tour, put out a full length and about eighty seven-inches, why are they playing house shows?”

“Not sure. Wanna find out?”

“How?”

“We could go.”

“Yeah, sure. Doesn’t matter to me.”

She tisks, “Too much Camus.”

“Hey!”

“Hey, what?”

“It’s not too much Camus. It’s just that there’s not much keeping me here. Also, I’m flexible.”

“Flexible or indecisive.”

“You love to argue, don’t you?

“Nope. I just love making you explain yourself.”

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Manuel sets her French dip in front of her, “Careful, Madeeya,” he says. “Eets hawt.”

"I will,” but her words are lost, he’s already gone.

She hesitates before lifting her sandwich off the plate, staring at it, looking—well, go to Michael’s, order the french dip and find out.

“What’s with the au jus?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.”

She dips her sandwich into the sauce, asks, “So, we going or what?”

“Don’t care, like I said.” She echoes these words as they leave my mouth.

“Eat your sandwich.”

“But it’s all oily.”

“I know.”

−

Soupy’s parents never were happy when they’d have to deal with a crowd of twenty-somethings stuffed into their basement singing every dirty word their son belted out over the screeching PA.

We’d typically go right in the front door, say hi to Mr. and Mrs. Campbell and head on down stairs. This was back when the only place any of our bands could play were house shows at Soupy’s or Steinborn’s. Now there’s an arrow drawn on a piece of paper taped to the front door pointing towards the side of the house, where the Bilco doors stand open. I guess after a few years of not dealing with the crowds, the noise, the filthy lyrics, they decided they at least didn’t have to bother one of those annoyances.

The heat steams out from the basement along with the smell of fifty or so kids Maria and I grew up with, sweating and singing the lyrics to a song I haven’t heard before.

“This is from their new split seven-inch with The Distance,” she yells into my ear as we find our place in the crowd.

nod, and smile, throw her a thumbs-up. Thumbs-up, Maria knows, means I dig it.

Across a sea of dyed hair and piercings, The Wonder Years jump and spin kick, throwing their instruments around, creating a show to go along with a uniform cacophony, making the dyed sea bob to the fast beats, making waves and adding a film of sweaty condensation to the bare basement walls. Soupy, swings his microphone in long sweeping circles and catches it in his other hand, ramming it towards his face, sings, “We’re six dudes from the keystone state! We’re broke as fuck, but we can’t complain!”

He’s losing his hair.

“He’s losing his hair.” I shout at Maria.

She mouths, “I know.”

The crowd separates and forms an empty circle in the center of the floor. Faces I’ve seen before line the ring with crossed arms and eager grins, waiting to see who’s come to dance tonight.

Maria taps my shoulder and grabs my hand. She pulls the tie that holds her pony tail in place out and puts it in the center of my palm. “Be right back,” she shouts. She pushes through the crowd, smiling at each person she passes, mouthing, Excuse me’s, or “Thank you’s, and joins the dancers in the circle. Her hair waves and flows through the air as she two-steps around the perimeter of the circle with her smile stuck to her face.

The band plays, Maria dances, and I scan the room, searching for faces I recognize. The newbies look jittery, overexcited. The familiars look tired, worn, older than I remember. They’re all my age but you couldn’t tell by looking at them. Not anymore. Rob’s going gray. Shannon’s got early signs of crow’s feet. Anna cut her hair and dyed it blonde to take the attention away from the bags under her eyes. Duke’s beard has grown past the collar of his shirt. Christian’s skin’s got a leathery looking texture from the chain smoking. Sarah is…pregnant?

She waves at me and carefully moves through the crowd to avoid getting her belly bumped by one of the excited newbies.

I stare at her belly.

She takes notice and shouts, “Outside?”

I nod. She walks. I follow.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” she says over the noise from the basement.

“Yeah—”

“How come?”

“I’ve been…busy.”

She pats her belly, “Me too.”

“I…I didn’t know you liked The Wonder Years.”

“I don’t. Jeff does.”

“Jeff?”

“Jeff, from Office Depot. Remember?”

“Oh. Yeah, totally. Jeff.”

“He’s the father.”

“Oh. How nice for you guys.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

I hate awkward silences. Now, stuck in the middle of one, I realize that this day, this month, this year, none of this is how I thought it would be. I had plans—Ideas for plans, anyway. We all did. Sarah wanted to travel. I wanted to stay local. Now she’s stuck and I’m coasting.

“Did you know,” she says, “the store’s closing.”

“It is?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“We just closed it tonight.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Wish I was.”

“What are you—”

“Finding a shitty job somewhere else. Jeff, too.”

“Did you finish—”

“No,” she says. “I got side tracked.”

“By what?”

She pats her belly again.

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

“S’okay.”

Are you still living with—”

“Yeah. Jeff moved in with us. Mom had Dan convert the basement into an apartment type thing.”

“That’s good.”

“That’s one way to look at it, sure.”

“Are you—”

“Not really. Not for a while. So. Maria, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“Moved on to her?”

“Oh, no. We’re friends.”

“Mhmm.”

“What’s that mean?”

“She’s really sweet.”

“No. What’s ‘mhmm’ mean?”

“Mhmm’s mhmm.”

“Mhmm is not mhmm. Mhmm means something. It always has with you.”

The music from the basement stops and Soupy says, “Thanks, everybody, for coming. This was a fuckin’ great way to end it. We love every single fucking one of you, but unfortunately The Wonder Years are done.”

There’s a moment of silence. Erie, creepy silence. Soupy says, “Thanks again,” and the cheering begins.

Sarah and I move away from the iron doors to get out of the way of the flood of people, eager to get out into breathable air, with their new t-shirts draped over shoulders and vinyls tucked under their armpits.

Maria, emerges from the basement out of the plume of steam. As she sees where I’m standing, she waves. Her skin’s shiny with sweat and her hair is a mess—not a bad mess, though. A good mess; a mess only achieved by trashing about during a night that’ll stand out and choke you up in the future. “Still got my hair tie, thief?” she asks, reaching us. “Hey, Sarah! Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” Sarah says.

I hand Maria her tie and she begins to get her hair organized. “Did you hear?”

“Yeah. No good.”

“They ran out of money apparently. Can’t afford tours or merch anymore. I bought a shirt to help, but Soupy says he’s gonna get a real job.”

“Doing what?”

“He doesn’t know.”

“Sucks.”

Sarah hops into the conversation, “What was so special about them? They made noise.”

“Beautiful,” Maria says, “cacophonous noise.”

“It’s the kind of stuff my little sister would listen to.”

“Your little sister’s got good taste.”

Sarah giggles. Faux amusement. She says, “So, what’s on the agenda for the rest of the night?”

“Probably the diner,” I say.

“As always.”

“I like the diner,” Maria says.

“Nothing changes with you, does it.”

“Why change something that doesn’t need changing?”

“Everything changes.”

Jeff makes his way through the crowd and wraps his arm around Sarah’s shoulder. “Jeff, you remember—”

“Yeah. The guy who quit to work at juvie.”

“Hey, Jeff.”

“Sup.”

Another awkward pause ensues before Sarah begins digging through her hand bag. “Here,” she says, “it worked on me,” and places a key in my hand. “Figured you, of course, would wanna see it one last time. The alarm’s off.”

Sarah and Jeff walk away, past a group of newbies sucking down cigarettes, laughing, having a good time. Who can blame them? Something they grew up with didn’t just end.

“What’s the key to?” Maria asks.

“Wanna see something?”

−

I set the lawn chairs down just in front of the ledge so we’d have some way to put our feet up. I’m surprised; they were still where we used to keep them. They were the only things left besides the empty shelves and end-caps and little pieces of flake-board that fell away from sold discounted office furniture. The only things that remained somewhat reminiscent of the place I remember were the check-out counters and the copy and print center. Everything else was either broken down and shipped off to other stores in the area, or just missing all together. Maria said it was weird to see. I said, yeah.

“Wow,” she says, “you can see everything from up here.”

“Yeah you can.” You can see the EVERYTHING MUST GO! sign on the Circuit City. The empty gas station. The parking lot where Pizza Hut used to be—

“It’s beautiful.”

“Think so?”

“Yeah! Look at it! You can see all of Airport Square. All the way down to five points. And, and look at the stars! This is beautiful.”

She begins to pull up the bottom of her shirt. “Turn around,” she says, “this is all sweaty.”

I turn around and hear her wet Gaslight Anthem shirt slap against the roof floor.

“Okay,” she says.

I turn around to see her in her new shirt.

“What do you think? Cool, huh?”

“Very cool.”

“You okay

“Absolutely. Why?”

“You seem off, I guess.”

“I’m good. Let’s take a seat and drink these beers.”

She sits down on the lawn chair and twists the cap off her bottle. I sit beside her and do the same. We sit in silence for a while, nursing cheap beers and staring out across the storefront-pocked landscape.

“How long were you and Sarah together exactly?”

“A year or so, I guess.”

“It must’ve been weird seeing her pregnant.”

“Yeah, it was…something.”

“What happened there? Between you two, I mean?”

“Um, not really all that much. We were twenty at the time. She was a year or two from finishing school and I was still fucking up. She started talking about the future, marriage and everything, ya know? A few months later, she told me to get her a ring or leave her alone. I left her alone.”

“Did you love her?”

“Nah.”

“So precise. Calculated, you are.”

“It’s how I deal with stuff. Being sure of everything. Trying not to change.”

“What about adaptation?”

“What do you mean?”

“As humans, we have to adapt to grow, change our thought processes to cope with…life.”

“I don’t like change.”

“No one does.”

“People are smarter than I originally thought.”

“And you’re smarter than this, I don’t like change, thing. Change happens. Look around. Even the bullshit changes. That Citibank was a Perkins. United Artists down there; it’s Frank Theaters now. These are just the little things. The big things, they’re the scary ones. But we adapt. Change. Look at you. You finished school. You had to change to do that.”

“No. I just had to wake up. Now that I’m awake, I wish I was still sleeping.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d be oblivious. Ignorant to the changes.

“Don’t wish for that.”

“Maria, I’ve been left behind by people who grew up faster than I did. Christ, Sarah is pregnant. The Wonder Years are over. Every memory I have is like reading my own ghostwritten biography. I wanna be living a life that doesn’t exist anymore. Everything changed little by little, right under my nose and it was all over long before I noticed. And, yeah, buildings and businesses are little things but they’re all different now, too. The places I used to go are all gone, along with the people I used to go there with.”

Maria twists off another cap and flicks it over the edge of the roof. “What about me,” she says, “I’m still here.”

“Sure you’re gonna stick around?”

“I don’t want to be anywhere else.” She stands up and sits on the ledge in front of me. “Look,” she says, “Everything’s changing. What we do, though, is roll with it. We move along, hold onto the things that’ll hold onto us and keep moving, keep floating.”

I finish my beer and nod. I take notice of the design on her new shirt. Five pirates are floating alongside their sinking ship. The Wonder Years is drawn in big bubble lettering above the ship, and below the water line it reads: Head Above Water, Boys.

“That’s a good shirt.” I say.

Maria smiles, says, “I know.”

“Atlantic Books closed down.”

“Yeah. Did you hear the comic shop in the mall closed?”

“Just now. Sam Goody’s gone too.”

“Linens N’ Things is empty.”

“You’re behind the times. That happened last year.”

“I know, but I already brought up Perkin’s.”

Maria finishes her beer and throws the bottle off the roof. The breaking glass is a distant pop.

“What was that for?”

“Trying to cheer you up. You used to like the sound of breaking glass.”

“It’s okay.”

“See? Change.”

“Not sure about that.”

She smiles, laughs a little, “Okay. Okay. How about we think of it as a message in a bottle that doesn’t need to get anywhere. An SOS that we don’t need to send.”

I drain the rest of my beer, stand up, and heave it out across the parking lot.