Chapter 1: Assorted Debris

In which we meet young Mel and our narrator.

I ran into Melancholy Catatonia unexpectedly at the beginning of fall.  I hadn’t seen her in months and suddenly she came slinking in that shy, shuffling way to the front of the line at the DMV where I was working at the time.  I wasn’t even looking when I asked her politely not to smile for her photograph.

“Well duh, Eli,” she groaned, stretching out that last syllable of my name, “Ee-lyyy.”

My eyes bulged as I saw the dark-eyed, pale, brooding, shy, introverted, sarcastic, cynical (but also secretly warm, loving, caring, understanding and accepting, as long as you don’t ask for her to exhibit any of those qualities) face of the girl named Melancholy.  Mel, to her friends.  Melancholy, to you.  She had disappeared at the beginning of summer in a characteristically mysterious fashion and had not told me when she returned.  How like her: she doesn’t come to you until she needs you for something.  Only Melancholy could go through what she did that summer and appear completely unchanged as far as the world could tell.  Of course, like everything about Mel, that was a lie, a show for the outside world.  That’s something she and I have in common.  We’re both huge f*****g liars.  And if you and I are going to get through this book together, we're going to have to accept that and move past it.

Of course she wouldn’t smile. That’s not something she does.  Not if she likes you.  She has the meanest smile I’ve ever seen.  She uses it to express hate.

She was a girl of 17.  As it was September, she would just have been entering her final year of high school, an age where most people are not yet aware that they really don’t have any idea who they are and maybe never will.  Her chestnut brown hair fell in inextricable tangles over her quiet face.  She was dressed in a formal black button-up men`s work shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and a knee-length denim skirt, keeping her hands jammed in the pockets.  For all intents and purposes her shoulders did not exist.  Slung across her torso was the strap to a large satchel in which she carried assorted debris -- dark make-up she was still rationing from her Goth phase, gum, a water bottle, interesting rocks, a dull souvenir knife from the Exeter Inn gift shop, a book of coupons mostly empty, a copy of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, a corn cob pipe, a socket wrench, spare underwear, a man’s disposable razor (and shaving cream,) a road map, a set of keys to a 1994 Toyota she didn’t own.  As far as I knew; on that day, she had come to me to obtain her learner’s permit.

After the flash of the camera, she rubbed her eyes, “I didn’t expect to see you here.  Doesn’t seem like the kind of job you’d take.”

“Well, I got tired of the kinds of jobs I would take, so I decided to try something new,” I sighed.  “I think I’m gonna quit.”

“Sweet,” she signed off on some paperwork declaring herself not-an-organ-donor, “Wanna come get some lunch?”

“Sure,” I shrugged, rubber stamping approval on her temporary permit before leaving without permission.

Down the block, there’s a restaurant called Lanny’s.  It’s in a converted emergency tunnel, so it’s underground.  During the Cold War, the town council of Kevinsburg voted unanimously to use the annual budget to fund a massive bomb shelter, you know, just in case.  Before it was complete, the Berlin Wall fell and plans were immediately drawn up to turn the whole thing into a shopping center.  If there ever is a war, we’ll still have Sears.

Lanny, the founder and mascot of the Lanny’s chain, is a real guy, and a real nice guy to boot.  I knew him in University, except instead of going to class, he mostly just hung around, smoked pot, and cooked endlessly.  He was a tall, thin, scruffy hipster, so he wasn’t cooking for himself, he just engaged with food better than he did the rest of the world.  Inevitably, when it became clear he was not committing himself to his classes, he agreed to stop pretending to enrol, and opened up his first restaurant.  The Underground Lanny’s is the flagship restaurant, and is themed after the basement apartment he kept under his mom’s place until last year when she moved to Florida.  He’s worth about $6 million.  He sleeps in her old room now.  He brought most of his Batman posters to the restaurant.  All the debts he accumulated, he pays back with free meals.

We were seated in the “Friends of Lanny” booth and I told Mel, “I’m glad you finally decided to get your license.  I was worried you’d never get out of this town.”

“I learned recently that there’s actually stuff out there worth driving to,” she told me, browsing the menu.

“What kind of stuff?” I asked.

“Important stuff.  I’ve been away all summer, Eli.”

“So I gathered.  What’d you come back for?”

“To leave again.” 

The waitress passed by.  Mel ordered Lanny’s Grilled Chicken Caesar, I ordered a Lanny Burger Supreme with onions.  When our orders arrived, she cut the chicken into even smaller pieces and let it mingle with the lettuce.  I told her, “I thought you were a vegetarian.”

“Who can keep track anymore?  I just don’t wanna be hungry.”  She forked some of the chicken into her mouth and said, gob full of food, “This chicken died a noble death.”  Diff ficken hied a hoble deff.

She had chosen the restaurant and I don’t remember mentioning that I knew Lanny.  I asked her why she wanted to come here, she pointed to the wooden paneling and the pin-up girl posters by the bar.  “Are you kidding?  It’s tacky as f**k.  I love it.”  Such are the tastes of Melancholy Catatonia.

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[Lola Nation]

Funny where our melancholy will take us ...