Innerwhelmed

Vernon Peele’s dress shirt smelled like a clogged shower drain. The clip on his ID badge stabbed Gabi’s shoulder as he drew her close, his mouth forming private words she couldn’t comprehend and didn’t want to. When she released herself from the squeeze, he thanked her, told her he’d needed that, reminded her for the umpteenth time about his supposedly unique and urgent need.

“Oh, and have you thought about my offer?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, trying not to betray her nausea. And she had been thinking about his offer. She’d been thinking how she would rather sleep on maggot-infested dirt, with rocks for a pillow and blankets made of cacti, than take him up on it.

“I’m gonna need you to make up your mind today,” he said.

“Okay.”

During these obligatory hugs, Gabi would often mentally zone out, her existence fading into Muzak-backed nothingness. Dissociation, her social worker used to call it. Whatever. She didn’t hate dissociation; it let her bypass the lousier sections of her life.

Alertness returned as she watched her boss collect his clipboard and wave at her on the way to his office. He paused to lurk in the paper goods section for a minute, appearing oddly paranoid as he picked up journals and planners only to put them back.

While she’d never imagined having an adult job would be pleasant, Gabi hadn’t expected it to be this brutal either. They seldom saw more than twenty customers a day here at Wish Upon a Gift, an open-concept retail space on Lakeview General Hospital’s third floor, sandwiched between the geriatric unit and the behavioral health wing. Minutes here lasted hours. A less depressing ambiance might’ve helped, but the area around the shop featured fluorescent accents over bronze sculptures of trees, deliberately uncomfortable benches, and carpet greener than anything in nature.

Gabi knew she couldn’t afford to be choosy about her employment. She knew she’d lucked out getting the Gellibrands as foster parents; they’d already done more than was required of them by finding her this gig. No one could have foreseen that on her first day here, Vernon Peele – a cousin of their gardener - would tell her (falsely) that scrubs were required work attire and then barge in on her while she reluctantly changed into a cheesy heart-covered pair. Or that he would claim to suffer from a medical condition that made him crave human touch more than normal people (that’s not a thing) and request hugs from her on an hourly basis. Not even her social worker could’ve seen that one coming.

“Hey, Gabrielle Delacroix!” Vernon called out from the manager’s office after loitering his way back to it.

“Yeah?”

At Gabi’s interview, Vernon had taken a special interest in her name.

“Mmm. Gabriele Delacroix,” he’d said, popping a stick of gum in his mouth and grinning as a janitor pushed a loud vacuum past the door to his office. “I like that. Sounds exotic. Is it French?”

“I guess so.”

“Say, Gabrielle Delacroix,” he asked her now, “that loss-prevention dufus hasn’t been hassling you, has he?” He swiped a clump of cement-colored hair from his face and refastened it into his footlong ponytail, the skin beneath his eyes hanging like melted curtains.

“Nope.”

“Good. Those failed wanna-be cops annoy me.”

Gabi’s job mostly involved straightening an extensive array of journals whose covers featured generic inspirational pictures and quotes. They’d just gotten a new one in today. It had a flamingo with the words, The future depends on what you do right now.

Back in the manager’s office, Vernon Peele made a frightfully gross throat sound.

“Hey, “Gabrielle Delacroix!” he called out again, rocking his squeaky chair forward.

“What?”

“Could you bring me another Red Bull from the cooler?”

“All right.”

This morning, the loss-prevention agent who’d asked them about employees pilfering soft drinks had asked Gabi privately about Vernon himself– not about his beverage consumption, but about the frequency and duration of the breaks he took. While Gabi had no complaints about her boss’s absences, (good riddance, dirtbag), she now realized he never paid for any of his beloved Red Bulls either. Too bad she’d thrown out that wanna-be cop’s business card.

Be kind, one of the journals’ covers advised, because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. It was a quote from Plato. Gabi remembered it from a mural at the group home she’d lived in for a while.

“What happened to my Red Bull, Gabriele Delacroix?”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

She set the can down on his desk and started to walk away, more eager than ever to resume her straightening. But Vernon Peele told her to wait. Exhaling through pursed lips, he lifted the cold can to his forehead and began massaging his own neck with his free hand.

“You know, Gabriele,” he said, apropos of nothing, “trauma never really leaves you.”

“Uh-huh,” Gabi said.

“I mean, you can’t wash it off. It stays in your body until it manifests as pain. And you can try to run away from the pain all you want, but nothing will ever change until you deal with the trauma. It can be hard to imagine anything good ever happening to you. But you know, Gabrielle, sometimes…”

He leaned in as, finally, he got around to what she guessed was the point. “Sometimes life deals you a good hand. Now, I’m sure you’re smart enough to realize a great opportunity when you see it.”

Gabi took a slight step backward, feeling for the office door so she wouldn’t hit it. “Sure, okay.”

After a long swig of Red Bull, Vernon Peele slammed down the can and winced as though he’d just done a tequila shot.

“Listen,” he said, “I want you to know that my offer comes with no strings attached. Okay? It’s simply free room and board in exchange for helping me convert my den into a photography studio. No big deal. I just need a body there to hand me the drill when I’m up on the ladder. And the other part I mentioned, the modeling part— totally optional. Just a fun idea I had. I wouldn’t make you do anything you’re uncomfortable with.”

“Uh-huh.”

At the group home, a counselor with pink hair had once given Gabi a keychain flashlight to use as a coping tool. “Pretend it’s a magic torch,” the woman had said. “It has the power to guide you out of any crisis, and it can lead you to the life of peace and fulfillment you deserve.” Now Gabi felt her pocket for the device, placing her thumb on its plastic power button.

“I hear a customer,” she lied. “I’d better get back out there.”

When she returned to the sales floor, Gabi bristled at the sight of a small black journal wedged between two stacks of folded tee shirts. People were always putting merchandise back where it didn’t belong. But upon closer inspection, she realized this journal wasn’t one of Wish Upon A Gift’s; it was nicer. Its cover had a smooth matte finish, rounded corners, and an elastic closure. It was the kind her foster Mom, Becky – a published poet – carried with her to write in coffee shops. Gabi opened it, and a pen covered in teeth marks fell out.

Shaky handwriting covered at least two-thirds of the notebook’s pages. Gabi flipped through it absently until one set of words made her stop. My mind is like a bumper car with bad steering, it said. The ink line from the g on the word “steering” trickled down the paper and blended seamlessly into a doodle of a human head with deep, dented scribbles for a brain. Below the portrait, a single word blazed across the page in a bold, spiky death-metal font.

Innerwhelmed.

Not a real word, Gabi was pretty sure, but she could relate to the feeling it described.

Vernon Peele made his vile throat noise again. “Oh,” he said, “if you see a small black notebook, bring it to me. It’s um… business documents I don’t need anyone snooping at.”

Gabi froze. Somewhere in the distance, a baby cried.

“I… I think I found it.”

Moving hesitantly toward his office, Gabi tried to reframe her idea of Vernon Peele.

Maybe he wasn’t a total sleazewad after all. Just a person fighting a hard battle. Maybe he really did merely want to help her as he claimed, to give her shelter until she could afford her own. He’d been right, she conceded, to remind her that her options were limited.

A startling burst of sound impeded her progress. From out of nowhere, two uniformed officers stormed in, gibberish hissing from their waistbands. They trudged straight past Gabi to the manager’s office.

The next few minutes passed in a series of quick flashes and slow-motion blurs, like comic book panels.

As Gabi lowered the book-holding hand to her side, a photo slipped from its back pocket. Gabi bent down to retrieve it; a glamor shot of some skanky emo chick in pigtails, and a caption in black Sharpie that read; Michelle Dubois, 16, is dying for it. Baby says get on your knees.

No sooner had Gabi recovered from this jarring image than she found herself confronted by another; the husky cop duo leading squirming Vernon Peele in handcuffs past the counter. Words like “unlawful use of medical equipment” and “obtaining a controlled substance by fraud” heaped spades upon spades of darkness on an underworld which, by the grace of who-knows-what, Gabi realized she’d barely just avoided.

Vernon stopped fidgeting to shoot a look of desperation at Gabi, who stood still clutching his black journal in her hands. His voice was a sad shadow of its former tenor, which had been pretty sad to begin with.

“Throw it out,” he pleaded.

Nodding dutifully, Gabi lowered the journal into the space behind the counter where the trash bin sat. But then - in a seemingly illogical act guided only by blind intuition - she tossed it a little bit to the left, where it landed in her open canvas tote bag.

The essence of stale coffee alerted Gabi to her surroundings after she’d dissociated her way through the artificially landscaped waiting room to a snack bar. Her window seat featured a dusk-tinged view of the parking lot. She set the tote bag on the table, notebook inside, and peered down at the reception awaiting her former employer’s perp walk; two cop cars, a CSI van, and a cluster of TV news vehicles.

A hush fell over the snack bar and all the surrounding green carpet as, on a TV bolted to the wall, a news anchor with a mustache detailed the full extent of Mr. Peele’s dirty deeds.

“Investigators say Peele, 45, lured victims into a fake mobile first-aid unit parked outside an all-ages music venue, where he drugged and took advantage of them. He is also a person of interest in the case of a missing teen whose body was discovered in a shallow grave just a mile from the hospital where he works.”

The murdered girl’s parents were offering a reward, the newscaster said, for information that led to her killers’ arrest. The reward was $20,000. The murdered girl’s name, he said, was Michelle Dubois.

Minutes later, the double glass doors of Lakeview General swooshed in tightly behind Gabi. Free at last, she thought, as a single windless raindrop nailed her squarely on the cheek. She felt her tote bag again, made sure the notebook was still there, then wrapped it in her denim jacket to keep it dry. She wasn’t far from the safety of the Gellibrand’s, from the phone where she would call police.

Gabrielle Delacroix inhaled the damp-earth air, pressed her palms to her eyes, and flicked her pocket keychain on. She picked up her pace as the rain accelerated, hurrying toward the life of peace and fulfillment she deserved.

Sometimes, life deals you a good hand.