Brent stood over me, a gun pointed at his head.
He always was a melodramatic little shit.
“I’ll do it!” he said, eyes bulging. He pulled the hammer back for emphasis. “I’m serious this time.”
I looked up at him, both annoyed and angry. And a little worried, I admit.
“I’m serious!” he repeated.
“Now why would you want to do that?” I asked, trying not to let him hear my annoyance. I’d found that this was the best answer whenever he flipped out on me. A part of me really wanted to call his bluff, but I knew better than that. Last time I had tried it, I ended up driving him to the emergency room. He had opened a vein in his wrist, and I had had to fight him down from a second, more fatal cut.
It’s amazing just how stubborn he can be when he wants to be right.
Then, it had been something about a chick and a checkbook, but this time? Well, this time, I was waiting to find out.
Brent still hadn’t said anything, his face was stuck making contortions. We’d done this so many times you’d think he’d have the script memorized by now. But maybe he meant it this time; maybe he really had finally hit the edge. He looked like he really did want to shoot himself.
“I just can’t take it anymore,” he said finally.
“You mean the break up between you and Amy?”
“No, damn it. That doesn’t matter anymore!” he sounded exasperated.
It had last week, I thought, but didn’t say it. “So what then?”
“This shit job, this shit life!” he lowered the gun and instead placed it under his arm. “There’s no meaning, no point! I mean, we hold down a crappy job at Wal-mart, and for what? So we can die at sixty while stocking the toy section?”
“Maybe. But even if you’re right, why end it any sooner than you have to?” There were usually a few lines before this one, but I had an opening, and it seemed stupid not to use it.
Brent went back to the script and slumped down into his chair. He dropped the gun to the floor and put his head in his hands. “I don’t know. It just hurts, you know, to be here and not do anything. Just sitting here, day after day, waiting for something to happen, always alone.” He looked down at the floor, going quiet. That more or less ended the scene and, thankfully, he didn’t expect me to add anything.
It always made me uncomfortable when Brent cracked like this. He needed a girlfriend for this type of work, not me. And Amy had broken up with him because he “hadn’t shared himself enough.” Really, it was because he wasn’t an asshole and Amy was really just looking for an excuse to be miserable.
Really, though, that was Brent’s problem. He just wasn’t an asshole and to participate in a social circle full of drinkers and minimum wage workers you had to be one. He really was just a nice guy, maybe a bit of a ham, but a nice guy none the less.
Dude, you need to get laid, I thought. I didn’t tell him that, of course. That would have just started the whole scene over again. But then something occurred to me that should have been bothering me from the beginning.
“Wait a minute, where’d you get the gun?”
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