Jessica Z Read online

“Don’t you remember? I got it the same time you ordered that girly scarf.”

  “Ha, ha,” he says. “Ouch.”

  We’re walking slowly up the stairs, and he still has my arm. I used to go on walks with my grandfather like this, arm in arm, through my grandparents’ orchard, and climbing the steps with Danny this way brings a ghost of that old comfort. Danny lets go when we get to Patrick’s floor, though, and the phantom is gone.

  “Listen, you and Patrick, you need to—” Danny stops himself and holds up his hands. “No. This is entirely none of my business. I’m sorry for even starting.”

  “What? Danny, tell me.” There’s a shriek of laughter above the sound of the party behind Patrick’s door.

  “No. I’m saying nothing. You are my sweet friend, and you don’t need my opinion. My little sister.”

  “A big brother would finish his sentence.”

  “No, a big brother would punch Patrick in the face for trying to get his hands on you. But serious, Jessica, this is none of my business.”

  Danny opens the door, and he touches my shoulder and slips away. There are a lot of people in the apartment, making it pretty warm inside despite Patrick having opened all the windows. I hear someone say “Hi, Jess” as we come in, and I sort of raise my hand and say hi back, even though I’m not sure exactly who it is I’m greeting as I look around and get my bearings. Everyone is nicely dressed, except for the usual freaks who try to outdo each other by acting like they don’t care, and it seems like everyone is having a good time.

  Someone has printed up a big picture of the dancing bus guy and taped it into one of Patrick’s picture frames, and hanging over it is a printed banner that reads: “Bennie G. for Mayor (or council at least)!!”

  I look around and try to find Patrick; I’m also looking at every short woman in the room to see if she looks familiar. Someone calls my name and I look over toward the folding-table “bar” and there’s Patrick, holding up an empty martini glass and raising his eyebrows as he wags the glass from side to side. I nod and shrug to indicate “make me whatever,” and he nods and shrugs and goes to work. It’s a well-practiced ritual dance we have, and, through its performance, all of the day’s earlier friction is pushed out of mind.

  I feel a hand on my elbow, and turn and find a diminutive—and I mean tiny, like less than five feet tall—shorthaired girl standing next to me.

  “I think I know you,” she says. “Did you ever work at MG Communications?”

  “You’re Gretchen,” I say. Of course this is Gretchen. And of course I know her.

  “And you’re…Jennifer?”

  “Jessica.”

  “That’s right, sorry, Jessica. How are you?”

  Gretchen had interviewed with us maybe a year and a half before. She was high energy, confident, and funny, and her portfolio was incredible. Everyone in the office loved her, and we told Mike he’d be crazy not to offer her the position. Mike did offer her the position, but, for reasons unknown, at least to me anyway, she had to decline, and we hired someone else, quiet Franklin, instead.

  Patrick was right, she is great, and I feel a little cheated because how am I going to be able to hate this great person who is now, apparently, my rival?

  “I’m good,” I say, maybe a little reflexively, because I’m not so good, but I am happy to see her. “We were really sad when you didn’t take the job. What happened?”

  “You have no idea how hard it was to say no. I was very torn.” She takes a little sip of whatever it is she’s holding there, wrapped in a cocktail napkin. “But I had a huge chance to do a consulting gig. Very scary, big jump, big client, but it turned into so many incredible opportunities. You guys were the coolest shop I’ve ever seen, though, seriously. It was very hard to say no.”

  “Mike’s such a great guy to work for.”

  “Seems like it. You guys still just do outdoorsy stuff?”

  “I am ruled by bike shorts lately.”

  At some point while we’re talking, Patrick ferries my drink over and silently hands it to me. He looks at me and then at Gretchen, and it almost seems like he’s going to say something but he scoots away before I can thank him for the cocktail. Gretchen laughs at this, and I do too, but we keep our conversation going. She’s much more funny than I remember, and prettier too (it was an interview environment, after all). Looking at her stretchy black top with thin straps, I can’t stop mentally comparing the perfectly tanned skin of her shoulders to the freckles and splotches of my own.

  “Hey, Gretchen!” calls a boy in the front room. He looks like one of Patrick’s geeky little programmers. I’ve probably met him at some point, but they all look the same after a while.

  Gretchen waves to him, then she looks at me and sighs. “I have to make an appearance. Ugh.” She makes a little show of finishing her drink in one gulp for fortitude, and touches my elbow again. “Find me before you leave, okay?”

  I nod, and she goes.

  I don’t really know anyone here, and Patrick is tied up in a conversation, so I look around the room for Danny, my favorite arm to hang on in social situations. Amy was supposed to be here, but she opted for a date instead.

  A few people say hi as I push through the throng, and I feel a hand on my shoulder and gasp when I turn and see who’s touching me. It’s our old neighbor Sarah who used to live one floor down before she moved away to San Diego last summer. I had no idea she’d be here, and I’m pretty happy to see her.

  “Jessica, honey, how are you?” she squeals, and she gives me a hug that almost makes me spill my drink.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” I ask. “How are you?”

  “I’m great, things are great. I had business up here and Patrick told me about this party; I was hoping I’d see you.” She glances around the room and lowers her voice. “How are things with Patrick?”

  I guess I’m a little flustered by the Gretchen development, and I don’t know where I’d begin to explain it, so I go for simple. “It’s complicated.”

  “What’s new?” Sarah frowns. “Things are always too complicated.”

  We chat for a while more, I catch up on her new girlfriend and what she’s doing down south, then someone I don’t know starts to talk to us and I break away to go find Danny. He’s not in this room anywhere, and then I see him through the doorway, seated on the edge of Patrick’s bed. A thin guy with sandy-colored hair is sitting with him, and they’re both leaning in toward each other and gesturing as they talk.

  “…But that vote does count,” I hear Danny saying as I get closer. “It absolutely counts. You aren’t going to change the system, you aren’t going to take power from the right unless—”

  “You are kidding yourself if you believe that,” sandy-haired guy says, and he’s pointing at Danny as he says it. “The same money is behind both sides, and you know it. There’s no real difference between the two…”

  Danny looks up at me. “Hey, Jessica,” he says, and he almost looks relieved that I’ve interrupted their discussion. He gestures toward the sandy-haired guy. “This is Josh.”

  Josh stands up, an act that never fails to impress me. “Hi,” he says. “Jessica?” There’s something odd about his eyes, they’re gray, and I realize he’s not blinking as he puts out his hand, just staring.

  “Yes, Jessica, well, ah, Jess is fine too.” It’s not quite withering, the way he’s looking at me. Critical? Penetrating? I can’t read it. Then he blinks.

  “Jess!” I hear a gravelly voice say, and then I feel an arm around my waist. “Ohh, Jess.” It’s Patrick’s friend Joe latching on to me, wearing a floral print shirt and thick tinted glasses that make his eyeballs look huge. “You met Josh.”

  “I did,” I say, trying subtly to twist out from his grasp. Joe used to be one of the funniest, kindest people I knew, but he’s become one of the scariest. He was laid off—with a huge severance—around the same time as Patrick, but instead of straightening himself out and going back to work when his money ran out, he�
�s slipped deeper into meth-fueled weirdness. Apparently he’s been selling his books and furniture lately for money to score.

  “Josh is an artist,” Joe growls. I can tell he’s drunk on top of being tweaked, and it feels like he’s using me to keep himself from falling down.

  “Really?” I ask. “What medium?” Now I’m actively trying to peel Joe’s hand from my hip. Josh sees this, and grabs Joe by the shoulders and pulls him away from me.

  “Come on, Joe, sit down.”

  “Ah,” Joe says.

  “I’m a lithographer,” Josh says. “I make prints—”

  “Of giant monster cocks!” Joe shouts. A few people around us laugh, but I want to kick him in the teeth. Josh doesn’t laugh, though. He just looks at me.

  “I know a lithographer, actually,” I say. “Have you ever heard of Greg Murrant?”

  “You know Murrant?”

  “I went to high school with him. I have a couple of his prints. Older ones, before he got…you know, whatever famous is in the lithography world.” Danny is looking up at me, bemused, from his seat on the bed.

  “He’s super famous. I teach him in my class.”

  “Your class?” I ask. “Just what do you do?”

  “He takes monster cocks, and makes them art!” Joe slurs.

  Josh turns and looks at Joe, and this time the look is seriously withering. Even in his state Joe gets it, and he mumbles something I can’t understand as he pushes himself up and staggers away.

  “I’ve been living in the U.K. I teach in London,” he says, and suddenly I can hear that little difference in the cadence of his speech picked up from living abroad. “But I was missing my parents. I’d never really met my sister’s kids and all that. And I had a chance to teach a course at the Art Academy here, so—”

  “Your family lives here?”

  “Oh no,” Josh says. “They’re back east. In the Midwest. So east of here, anyway. But it’s easy enough to get around.” Patrick comes to stand by my side.

  “You guys need anything?” he asks. “You doing okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Josh says. Danny stands up and hands Patrick his glass, and I realize my own is empty. I give Patrick the nod-and-shrug, and he takes my glass and walks away.

  “I’d love to see those Murrants sometime,” Josh says. He’s giving me that stare again.

  “Sure,” I say, wishing I had even my martini glass to hide behind. “Whenever, I mean, I live one floor down. Whenever.”

  “Alright, then,” he says.

  I get away and orbit the room. Josh keeps looking at me. I can feel it. Patrick is busy tending bar and playing DJ, so I can’t go hide by him. I see Gretchen talking to him for a moment, and they’re laughing together about something. So I go around the room again, saying hi, saying hi, and after a while I see Gretchen again, by herself. When our eyes meet she makes a funny face and laughs and we walk toward each other.

  “Good time?” she asks. She looks down at herself, side to side, and picks at some speck on her top, just above her hip. “Cat hair. Gets everywhere. White cat, black top. No good.” She holds up her index finger and thumb, pinched together like they’re holding something. I don’t see it.

  “It’s alright,” I say. “I love to see the usual crazy folk. They always show up at Pat’s little festivals.”

  “Who’s the one in the glasses? Really messed up guy.”

  “That’s Joe. He’s a wreck. Unemployed, laid off with lots of money. Now, not so much money left.”

  “Like ten thousand other guys in this city. And the light-haired one?”

  “He’s an artist, I guess. A printer.”

  “He’s watching you,” she says, and she looks at me and raises an eyebrow.

  I play dumb. “Is he?” I ask, and Gretchen rolls her eyes.

  “Hey, Jess!” Patrick calls, holding up my now-filled martini glass in one hand and the Jaco Pastorius CD he asked me to get him for his birthday in the other. Is he asking me if he should play it? I do the shrug-and-nod again; I don’t know anything about that music. My musical appreciation is stuck somewhere in the world of Sarah McLachlan and U2, while Patrick, who kindly has never teased me about my own musical tastes and actually is a musician, comprehends classical music and jazz and—

  Jazz? White cat? Jazzboy? Blanco?

  I quickly look back to Gretchen, and even before I’m fully thinking what I’m saying, I ask, “Do you write the PitchBitch?”

  Gretchen lets out a tiny gasp and her cheeks go pink. “I,” she starts, then grabs my hand and comes close to me as she looks at the people around us. “You can’t tell anyone,” she says, and she actually seems really frightened there, looking up at me. “Please. I could lose my work. It would be…I’ve said stuff, really bad stuff, about clients. About everyone.” She’s whispering now.

  “No, no,” I say, and I’m squeezing her hand as I say it. “Honestly, I wouldn’t—”

  “How did you know? No one has ever…” We both look across to Patrick working over the stereo, and Gretchen gasps again. “Oh my God. I am so sorry.”

  “No, stop, you didn’t know. It’s not like…how would you have ever known?” This is, admittedly, pretty new territory for me, and I’m having a hard time thinking what I should say. So I say the first thing that comes to my mind: the truth. “I love your blog. I read it every day. Everyone at MG does.”

  “Really?”

  “Serious. I was worried too, last week—”

  “I got so many e-mails. You have no idea.”

  “I bet. You’re popular. Do you ever get creepy people?”

  “Honestly, no. I thought that would be a problem when it started to take off, but it’s not like I have a picture up or anything, so no weirdos. Yet. The funniest thing is when people write me, like, thinking they know for sure who I am, you know, they can be kind of mean about it.” Gretchen smiles and rolls her eyes.

  We’re still standing close and talking in low voices, and our clasped hands lend a silly feeling of conspiracy that I kind of like. “Mike accused me of being you, once,” I say.

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “I took it as a compliment.”

  Someone bumps Gretchen walking from behind, and she makes a “whoa!” face as she grabs my arm for support. “Jazzboy,” she says, giggling as she keeps herself upright. “Mixing doubles.”

  “Doubles, triples,” I say. “He’s a gentleman, though.”

  “Maybe he’s a little too much of a gentleman. So you said you’re doing bike shorts.”

  “It’s a women’s clothing line. Active wear. They’re trying to branch out from just the bike thing. Cute running tops. Not just black Lycra. They’re more than bike shorts, you know.” This drink is going down a little too easily, and seems maybe a little too potent. “Branching out. Building presence in U.S. markets. Markets worldwide.”

  “But you’d say,” Gretchen says, “that you’re familiar with the active lifestyle demographic.”

  “You could say that. I’d say I’m just pretending.”

  Gretchen laughs again, and I’m envious of the easy way she opens her mouth and shows her perfect teeth and lets it come out ha ha ha!

  “We should talk more,” she says, smiling. She’s still gripping my hand.

  7

  Things are hazy as I’m waking up, and I’m blinking against the not quite daylit room as I take stock of my condition. Whoa. I’m in my own bed, even though I’m not sure how or when I got here, and I’m in my pajamas. Katie, in such a situation, would say something like, “Thank you, PJ Fairy!” I’m alone too, and the undisturbed covers on the left side of my bed suggest I have been all night. Maybe I should give thanks to the PJ Fairy for this as well.

  I’m not sure what time it is. I sit up to look at the clock, but this motion disturbs whatever equilibrium I’ve been maintaining in my stomach, so I lie right back down again. There’s a strange hissing sound coming from the back of my apartment that probably should be investigated, and I ne
ed to pee too, badly. I’ll take care of both of these things, if I can get up.

  Closing my eyes, I begin putting the pieces together. Remembering laughing hard, laughing really hard about something with Gretchen. Must have been funny, whatever it was.

  The hissing sound is starting to concern me, so I slide off the bed to my feet and shuffle back through the kitchen. It’s definitely coming from the bathroom, and when I get there, I see the cold water tap has been left on full blast and my toothbrush is resting in the bottom of the sink. I turn off the water and grab the toothbrush, then scrub my teeth as I sit on the toilet to pee.

  I know already that nothing significant is going to be accomplished today, so I go straight back to bed. Maybe I’ll be successful at a little more sleep, but I doubt it. I never sleep well with a hangover. Katie claims that she doesn’t suffer from hangovers, but I know it’s a lie; I can think of several occasions during our teens when she was curled up in bed with a greenish complexion, swearing she’d never touch something or other again.

  Katie and I never really partied in high school. We—well, maybe not so much me, but certainly Katie—had the “good girl” reputations around our necks; the valedictory stances we publicly maintained kept us from getting too crazy, and we kept each other in line. This is not to say we were never drunk, though.

  Our father, when he left, left everything, including a well-stocked bar. I couldn’t exactly tell my friends that he moved out because nothing was ever moved. He just left. His dresser remained filled, and his shirts and slacks stayed behind, hanging like paternal ghosts in what had been his side of the closet. Eventually, Mom hired some men to come and take these things away, along with the engraved wineglasses from the kitchen cabinet and the glass paperweights and weird lamp and stacks of textbooks and engineering journals that filled his study. She was practical enough to keep certain items of convenience, though: utilitarian things like heavy, cluttered toolboxes and the lawn sprinkler, and his old electric carving knife remained and became ours.

  Our suburban home was modest and not quite middle-aged, and I came to understand that, in the terms of their separation, things were set up so that the place would be paid for by Dad though only we would continue to live there. I loved our house. Two maple trees grew in the front yard, and on clear days you could just barely see the far-off snowy cap of Mount Rainier from our bedroom window. The basement had been finished at some point when we were very little, dressed up with fake wood paneling and textured ceiling tiles and some mottled brown carpet that promptly got damp and still vaguely smells, I’m sure, like moldy bread. A bar was constructed as well, and its shiny varnished surface was reflected by a Schlitz beer mirror hanging behind it.