The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy (reading fiction .TXT) 📗

vaulted the car into every ditch that I passed. What a dumb and dangerous thing: the car! What a joy to assume power over something so deadly, so heavy, so fun. Driving is an act of accepting you have no control. The car might skid on a splinter of ice and swivel you into a tree. The car might need a few stitches, a bumper, a buff of the hood. But that’s the end of you. Blam! Splat! An X over each eye, tongue slumming out of your mouth. I’d forgotten the pure, powerless pleasure of sitting behind a steering wheel, turning and twisting and revving and braking as if it made any difference. I skimmed the edge of death a half-dozen times before reaching the highway.

Apparently California is the home of the highway, the kind of highway that frees the mind and the soul—but it could never unleash me like a New Jersey highway. Route 80 and 287 and 1—the original!—were not merely roads in my life, but escape routes from the bramble of stop signs and tractor crossings and dirt paths gluing my hometown together. I zipped onto the highway liquored with giddiness, gunning Dyson’s hatchback until the steering wheel trembled. I passed everyone and blasted a pop radio station, sang along to a song I’d never heard in my life. The sky was a blank, blue sheet, the sun devoured by distance. I could’ve gone anywhere. Every exit offered a new life, lives that would surely be easier than whatever awaited me back at The Atmosphere, but I was angry: angry at Cassandra for her cheerful condescension. And I wanted to make The Atmosphere work, to prove to her I didn’t deserve her pity.

Dyson ordered uniforms from a mom-and-pop printing shop called Hertz Shirts. The store shared an aging strip mall containing a bodega, a Laundromat, an abandoned sub shop, and three CrossFit studios. Bulky men in tank tops were flipping tractor tires in the parking lot.

Hertz Shirts smelled of spearmint candies and ink. Enormous machines like titanium buffalos grazed behind the counter. A desktop computer grumbled next to the register. “Welcome,” said Mom and Pop, a pair of wizened white people who had aged into identical twins: they wore gray slacks and blue button-down shirts spotted with fingerprints.

“I’m picking up an order for Dyson Layne,” I said. The thrill of driving thundered inside me; my words shook with impatience. I wanted back on the road.

Pop retrieved a pair of plastic-wrapped bundles from the back.

“I need to check them,” I said.

“What’s to check?” asked Mom.

“Please open the package,” I said, then snapped my fingers when they stalled.

“We stand by our work,” she said.

Pop pulled a box cutter out of his back pocket and buried the blade into the wrapping. He cut cleanly through the center without speaking.

Inside the first bundle were tracksuits, T-shirts, and mesh shorts for the men. The tracksuits and T-shirts were stone colored, the mesh shorts as red as strawberries. The Atmospherians was stitched into the breasts of the shirts. The second bundle held T-shirts, zip hoodies, and shorts for Dyson and me. Our color scheme inverted the men’s: silver bottoms, red tops. Our names were stitched beneath The Atmospherians. Spelled correctly—but a bothersome flourish had been added to the final a in Sasha.

Mom asked if I was satisfied.

The flourish was a meaningless mistake. Any other day, I would have thanked Mom and politely left. But I was still angry about my call with Cassandra. My life seemed petty and small compared to hers, and I wanted to exert power over someone, to feel how I imagined Cassandra must’ve felt talking to me. “There’s a problem with the a in Sasha.”

“That’s traditional script,” said Mom. “It must look unfamiliar to someone your age.”

“That tail is excessive. It’s whimsical, unscrupulous. I can’t accept it in this condition.”

“Perfect condition,” Mom snapped.

“I have a reputation to uphold,” I said, though I certainly didn’t.

“So you don’t want the clothing?” Mom asked.

“No, I don’t want it,” I said. “But I need it today. You’ve backed me into a corner. I hope you’re proud of yourselves.” I handed over Dyson’s credit card.

Mom examined the card. If I had been more polite I doubt she would have studied the card so exhaustively. But she controlled the room now, and gave the card to Pop for approval—disapproval. “Your name is Sasha?” she said.

“That’s right.”

Pop fanned his face with the card.

“This card isn’t Sasha’s,” said Mom.

“Dyson gave me his card to pick up the order.”

“Identity theft is on the rise,” Mom said.

Pop spoke his first words: “I was telling Mom the other day about identity thieves who behead their victims and feed their bodies to carnivorous pigs and escape with their cash and their credit cards and their clothes and run to places like Cuba and Sudan before anyone’s wiser.”

“This is my partner’s card.”

“We used to say husband,” Pop said, still fanning his face.

“Business partner. We run a small business. We use Dyson’s card for expenses.”

“How about you show some I.D.”

“It’s Dyson’s card. He made the order. You stitched his name onto a dozen shirts—correctly, I might add, without a whimsical flourish.” My best and worst selves always veered close to each other: obsessive, critical, stubborn. And their resistance only made me more reckless and stubborn.

“You’re sure protesting a lot.”

“If I were an identity thief, wouldn’t I buy a TV or fancy shoes?”

“I can’t pretend to imagine the logic of thieves,” Mom said.

“The problem with the identity thieves is police never know who to track.”

“Maybe Sasha is Dyson’s wife,” Mom said to Pop.

“Maybe Sasha and Dyson are stuffed in her trunk,” he replied.

“I’m Sasha!” I shouted.

“Then let us see your I.D.”

“All chopped and zipped into Baggies,” Pop said.

“You’ll run the card if I show you my license?”

They nodded in unison.

Reluctantly, I handed it over.

Pop spelled my name aloud: “S-a-s-h-a M-a-r-c-u-s.” Mom typed my name into Google and gasped at the results.

I spread both hands over the monitor. “That’s all lies,” I said.

“Get back,”