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  Table of

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Join For A Free Story

  Please Leave A Review

  A Note From Alice

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Alice Archer

  About Alice Archer

  Copyright

  For Vashon Island

  and the creative clan I was privileged to belong to

  there for several years in the 1990s.

  I love you yet and forever.

  Feeling shame is the exact opposite of feeling creative.

  Julia Roberts

  Sex, Lies & Creativity

  Chapter 1

  Grant

  It began with an impulse buy at a gas station grocery store.

  I paid for a muffin as big as a baby’s head and glared at the two quarters I received as change. Not enough for breakfast from the fast-food counter, but, God, the bacon and eggs smelled good.

  The guy behind me in line tapped me on the shoulder. “You done, mister?”

  I scanned the crowded countertop. Instead of the beef jerky I was looking for, I found a box of tiny scrolls inviting me to Start Your Day the Zodiac Way.

  Why the hell not? It would be utter bullshit, but if I couldn’t get the food I wanted, I might as well pay fifty cents for a laugh. I dug through the box to find a Cancer scroll for the month of June, paid for it, and went out into the dreary Seattle chill to stand under the awning and read it.

  Don’t get too attached to your job. The planets picked you to mess with this month. Your best bet for getting through is to get creative.

  Maybe I could get my money back, because I sure as hell wasn’t laughing. Without my job at the copy center, crap though it was, life would get bleak in a hurry. The planets had better back off. I shoved the scroll into the front pocket of my jeans, pulled up the hood of my jacket, and walked the rest of the way to work.

  At random moments that day, I’d find the tight scroll in my pocket and be surprised I hadn’t thrown it away. I did chuck it once—tossed it into the trash can under one of the cash registers. An hour later, I pawed through the crumpled papers to get it back.

  Most of the university students we catered to had fled the scene after commencement over the weekend, leaving me restocking paper behind the counter on a dead Monday, courting The Zone, a state of mind I strived for. No one and nothing could touch me in The Zone. I became a robotic drone, a walking copy center instruction manual, the big guy people called over to reach a high shelf or lift a heavy box. When I wasn’t in The Zone, I tended to ask myself why I gravitated to jobs that required so little of me.

  Nothing good ever came from asking questions like that.

  Five hours into my shift, I ticked off two more items on my to-do list, waved to Marcy, and tapped my watch to let her know I was taking my dinner break. When I dipped into my pocket for the keys to open the door to the staff area, my fingers touched the scroll again.

  When was the last time I was creative on purpose?

  In February, the store manager had praised me when I’d come up with a solution for a woman who needed a print on a nonstandard canvas size, but I hadn’t felt creative. I’d barely felt human. I’d been motivated to come up with a solution for the same reason a serf was motivated to over deliver—out of hope for a holiday ham from the bastards in the castle. Food on the table, baby.

  “Peeved prick on register two.” Marcy’s voice came through my headset, which I hadn’t yet taken off.

  “Can’t you handle it?” I asked into my mouthpiece. But she had her hands full fitting a new roll onto the spindle of the banner printer. Noah, the new kid, stood at register two, which meant I’d have to deal with it.

  “It’s a simple print job, for fuck’s sake.” A middle-aged man in a classy suit leaned across the counter and waved a sheet of paper in Noah’s face. “Ten resumes I can be proud to pass around. How difficult is that?” He seemed one curse away from getting physical. Fix this, I imagined him saying, or I will cover your sorry face with paper cuts. I chuckled at the thought and the man transferred his attention to me.

  Noah, frozen with his mouth open, kept his eyes on the threat.

  “I’ve got this.” I gently moved Noah aside. With a blink, he closed his mouth and hauled in a breath.

  Suit Guy peered at my name tag, which included the words Assistant Manager, as did all name tags once an employee passed the three-month mark. “Finally,” he said, “someone who’s not a fucking idiot.”

  The zodiac scroll chose that moment to emit a hey, remember me? pulse against my thigh. I straightened, curious about my options.

  “How about this, mister?” I got a bit sarcastic with the mister, which was new for me, but Noah looked like he was about to faint, and Suit Guy’s attitude pissed me off. “You tell me what the problem is, minus curses and insults, and we’ll fix it.” I picked up a cream-colored resume from the stack on the counter and scanned it. Lawyer looking for work. Could be tricky
. Might even require a bit of creativity. The idea of using creativity to get things back to boring and normal made me release an amused snort I managed to convert to a sniff.

  The lawyer’s gaze sharpened. “I asked for your nicest resume paper. This is shit.” He sneered, his curse a glove thrown at my feet. “Flimsy, subpar, loser shit.”

  I set the resume down and withdrew my hands beneath the counter to mime cracking my knuckles like a fighter prepping for a brawl. Stop it. I needed the job more than I needed to pretend to be creative. “This is our top-quality stock, sir. What would you like us to do? I’d be glad to give you a full refund.”

  I thought of all the picky customers I’d placated over my years of working in copy centers—jerks I’d bent over backward to serve when they’d complained and bitched.

  The zodiac scroll emitted another pulse.

  “Or,” I said with a fake smile, “we could redo the job on fetching sunny-yellow card stock. Won’t be flimsy. That particular yellow really makes the black ink pop. Might get you more action.” My snark was inadvisable. So was my wink.

  The lawyer’s voice hardened. “Show some respect here.”

  For the first time since long before the divorce, I felt alive. I widened my smile. “I will if you will.”

  “Grant, what are you doing?” Marcy said through my headset.

  The lawyer pointed at Noah. “If you don’t fire that incompetent infant right now so he doesn’t screw up anyone else’s career, I will make your life hurt.”

  I put my hands flat on the counter. “Watch yourself, or I’ll ban you from the store.”

  The Zone was long gone, replaced by a heady, unfamiliar feeling, a surge of power an emperor might lean into as he shook up his realm to sift out the riffraff.

  The lawyer poked his finger at me, almost close enough to make contact with my sternum. “Go fuck yourself with a printer cartridge.”

  “Nice one.” I granted him a cool chuckle and adjusted my mouthpiece. “Hey, Marcy, I need you to bring me a printer cartridge and then call the cops.” When I played the scene forward in my mind, the threat of cops made Suit Guy back off and turn complacent, and I got to be a hero for a change. In reality, the lawyer’s face flushed and his eyes turned mean.

  “Wow,” I said with a suave detachment I wasn’t totally feeling anymore. “That particular color of red doesn’t look healthy.”

  He reached over the counter to grab the front of my company polo shirt. His other hand balled into a fist he aimed at my face. His wild eyes told me he needed an outlet—any outlet—for his life’s current misery.

  Not wishing to be laid up in the hospital without health insurance, which I hadn’t had since the divorce, I wrapped a hand around his arm holding my shirt and yanked him forward to pull him off balance. It didn’t stop his fist from connecting with my face, but it deflected the blow.

  Nose intact. Left temple not so great.

  The physical contact seemed to drain the lawyer’s energy all at once. I rushed around the counter to support him. As the victor, I felt I could spare him the indignity of a collapse to the floor from career distress.

  Suit Guy was still crying when the cops arrived.

  On my delayed dinner break, I sat in the back office and chewed tasteless bites of peanut butter sandwich while I wrote up the incident report required by company policy. I kept having to go back and edit out the swagger.

  It felt good to have done something positive. In the six months since Laura had surprised me with the divorce, I’d slogged through a swamp of apathy. I was still waiting for the shock to wear off.

  “It’s not about you making so little money,” Laura had said that day. “If you’re not even going to reach for your potential, I don’t want to be married to you anymore.” She’d had a valid point. It had been easier to leave than come up with a counterargument.

  The day after the Suit Guy incident, I was ready to forget all about it, unlike Noah, whose sappy gazes and moony eyes were getting on my nerves. In response, I revised the July work schedule so Noah and I shared only a few shifts. To celebrate, I splurged on a small bag of potato chips from the vending machine in the break room to eat with my peanut butter sandwich.

  Partway through my meal, Noah walked in and said in a reverent voice, “There’s someone here to see you.” He tacked on a belated “sir,” which he’d never done before. With my back to the door, Noah didn’t see me roll my eyes.

  “Thanks,” I said without turning around. “I’ll be right out.”

  At first, like a fool, I thought someone had come from headquarters to deliver a commendation. “With gratitude for your courageous protection of a fellow worker,” the regional manager might have said as she presented me with a certificate I could tape to the splotchy wall of my motel room.

  Someone had come from headquarters, but not to deliver the message I’d imagined. Suit Guy had filed a complaint. I was suspended, effective immediately, pending review.

  I swiveled in the desk chair to face the wall and hide my expression—a pained squint familiar from testicular exams, back when I’d had annual checkups. And a doctor. And a car to drive to his office.

  Ten minutes later, I stood on the sidewalk with a plastic bag of junk from my locker. I couldn’t even say I was surprised. Deep down, I’d known my attempt to get creative would end in disaster. What had surprised me was my choice to quit instead of wait for the review. The result was no job and no income, compounded by no savings and no prospects.

  I turned toward home, such as it wasn’t, plodding along in the drizzle. To conserve money, I skipped the bus and walked all the way to the Easy Night Motel, the shabbiest in a series of way-below-average motels I’d called home since I’d moved back to Washington State.

  Laura remained in California with her successful life-coaching business and high expectations. I could have retreated to Eastern Washington, where my parents and siblings lived, but those expectations would have been even harder to manage than Laura’s.

  I walked faster to escape that train of thought, which hurt my chest and made my sore temple throb. What would I do without the comforting void of The Zone? By the time I inserted the key in the doorknob at the motel in the awful end of downtown, I couldn’t breathe.

  Barricaded behind the closed door, I toppled on the bed in the room’s inky darkness. The anvil of rejection pressed me into the mattress. Fear tried to elbow in, but I looked the other way. I could wonder where I’d be in a week, but I wouldn’t relive rejections from long ago.

  The anxiety attack woke me from a dream of dark shapes and heavy silence into a world not much different. I turned on the TV and got up to take off my boots. I drank cup after cup of water from the bathroom tap, but I couldn’t get my lungs to inflate. I pulled the expired health insurance card from my wallet and stared down at it as I sat on the edge of the bed and wheezed.

  When Laura had dropped me at the Greyhound station in Santa Barbara, she’d said, “I deserve someone better than you.” I was tempted to call her a bitch for that, but I really couldn’t, since I agreed with her.

  In the motel’s cramped bathroom, I took a shower so hot my back seared, but my breathing slowed and my mind finally blanked. I left the TV on and crawled into bed, grateful for another night in the haven of the tiny room.

  The next morning, warm and cozy under the covers, I made a new resolution. I’d given creativity a chance and bombed. Going forward, I’d stick to steely logic. Furthermore, I’d stay in bed until I had an actual plan for getting my shit together.

  During a mental review of people who might let me couch surf until my next job kicked in with a paycheck, I considered Laura’s brother, Mitch, who lived in Seattle, then quickly rejected him. He hadn’t liked me even before his sister divorced me. The few times Laura and I had visited Mitch, he’d chatted with her and turned a cold face to me, like it was my fault Laura had ma
de the bad decision to marry me.

  I shook my head to dislodge Mitch’s judgment and challenged myself to stay in bed until I had a viable plan. But I really had to pee. An image came to me of peeing outside. I sat up and put my legs over the edge of the bed. Maybe Mitch could help. Best of all, he wouldn’t have to know.

  I leapt up, did my business in the bathroom, then grabbed my phone and dove back under the covers to find the old email from Laura in which she’d shared news of Mitch and his wife, Sonya, buying a cabin on Vashon Island. We’d visited them not long afterward. They’d taken us to Vashon for lunch and a quick tour of the island. So quick Mitch had only pointed to the driveway of their new property, and then rushed us to catch the next ferry back to Seattle.

  Using Google Maps on my phone, I pieced together our route around the island to see if I could pinpoint the location of Mitch’s driveway. It had been on the west side. There. Off Southwest Huckleberry Lane. Sonya had told us they’d bought the Vashon property so they could spend summers on the island with easy access for Mitch to his downtown law firm.

  The Washington State Ferries website informed me of a passenger-only water taxi from downtown. I had a plan. I’d go to Vashon, find Mitch’s cabin, try to get in without having to break in, and stay just long enough to clear my mind, breathe some fresh air, and minimize expenses. Also, I could pee outside.

  I didn’t expect a sojourn to Vashon to help me “reach my potential,” as Laura liked to put it. Laura and I both knew me reaching my potential was unlikely if it hadn’t happened yet. But if I could slow my downward spiral, I might find another job before my money ran out. Otherwise, my next stop would be a homeless shelter.

  I spent one more night in the motel, then hoisted my backpack full of everything I owned and walked down the hill to the dock, where I boarded the 7:40 a.m. water taxi.

  The small boat motored southwest toward Vashon, a land mass eight miles wide by thirteen miles long tucked into the southern reach of Puget Sound. We would dock at the north end of the island. At the south end, another ferry ran to the city of Tacoma. I learned all of that from the big map on the wall inside the passenger cabin of the boat.

  There were plenty of empty seats, but I didn’t feel like sitting. After I read everything on the bulletin board, including the business cards and flyers, the slap of water against the bow and the scent of sea enticed me out to the open-air deck.