Jessica Z Read online

  The bar made a great play set for Katie and me when we were small. It handily stood in as a kitchen or a store checkout or an operating table, depending on our imaginary needs of the day. The contents of the cabinets beneath the bar seemed insignificant, just old boxes rendered limp by the constant basement moisture, and it wasn’t until the summer before my sophomore year in high school that we actually got interested in what had been stored down there.

  The number of unopened liquor bottles we found in those decaying boxes astounded us. Dad never really entertained, and neither of us could remember him drinking anything other than wine with dinner, but the amount of spirits stored in the bar seemed more appropriate for a busy restaurant, not some musty basement playroom. Our explorations were cautious at first; we only sampled from bottles of clear liquids where missing contents could be replaced by tap water. Any knowledge of the strange art of mixology gained that summer came through trial and error: Coca-Cola mixed with vodka, we learned, was fairly palatable, but gin and Coke was certainly not.

  We found a nice routine on those summer nights. Wait for Mom to go to bed, experiment with new drink mixture, curl up together under a blanket, and watch cable movie channels until asleep. Repeat on following night. We were obsessed with Cinemax, and we discussed the soft-core skin films with drunken, yet critical, eyes.

  “I think the brown-haired girl is the killer,” Katie would say. “The one with the pointy boobs?”

  “Yes, that one.”

  Katie was always more daring with her drink creations. She was, after all, the one responsible for gin and Coke. I remember pouring mine out after the first sip, but she refused to let it go to waste and later I rubbed her back while she hung her head in the toilet.

  I’m not quite to the point of throwing up, lying here, but I have the feeling if I did throw up I might feel better. I don’t want to make myself do it, though. But I do want to call Katie, so I roll over to the left side of the bed to stretch and reach and grab the phone. I dial her number and tumble back, closing my eyes as I listen to it ring.

  “Katie,” I croak when she picks up.

  “What did you do?” She knows me too well.

  “My stomach.”

  “Culprit? What was it?”

  “It was pink, and served in a martini glass.”

  “The sweet drinks kill you every time, Jess.”

  “I’ll never learn.” I roll to my side and close my eyes as I hold the phone to my ear. “It wasn’t as bad as gin and Coke.”

  “I learned from that pretty quickly. Did you get my message?”

  “No? Your message? I didn’t check.”

  “I left one last night.” She pauses. “I got the call, I’m going on the boat.” I can hear her smiling as she says it, and I sit up.

  “You got on? They, you’re accepted?”

  “I did. I am.”

  “That’s so great!” I’m thrilled, and for the moment, my hangover is forgotten. “When is it? When do you go?”

  “Beginning of August. New Zealand first, South Island, ten days there for an orientation thing, then we fly to Tahiti. Then all around the islands for two months. Beaches galore.”

  “K., that’s so great.” I almost feel like I’m going to cry. She’s going. She’s safe. “I’m so happy for you. But how will we—”

  She knows. “The boat has satellite Internet,” she says. “We can send e-mail.”

  “What about the doctor friend?” I ask.

  “We’ll see where all that goes,” she says, not very positively, and then she laughs. “I guess I can e-mail him too, if I need to.”

  I lie back down and close my eyes again. “I met an artist guy last night who knows Greg Murrant.”

  “That’s a name I haven’t thought of in forever. Was he cute?”

  “The artist guy? Cute’s not the right word. More like composed. Serious. Distinguished maybe.”

  “He’s older?”

  “Not older, just different. Not a boy.”

  “You like him,” she says, and I’m not sure if I can hear another smile in her voice. “You’re curious.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You think he’s mysterious.”

  “There was an element of mystery there, yes.”

  “Be careful.”

  “There’s nothing to be careful about.”

  “Yet,” she says, and it doesn’t sound like she’s smiling now.

  “Yet.”

  “What about Patrick?” she asks.

  “Oh, right, him,” I say. “I think his new girlfriend and I are best friends now. Seriously.” I need a drink of water. “Oh God, my stomach.”

  My sister sighs. “You always love to injure yourself, Jess.”

  I do manage to sleep a little more, and when I wake up I’m craving something fizzy and nonalcoholic to soothe my abused stomach. I know there’s nothing like that in my fridge, and Patrick never buys soda (and even if he did, I’m not exactly sure I’d want to see him right now). But some fresh air would be positive, I think, and it’s not such a long walk up to the corner store, so sure, I’ll make the attempt. With jeans and a fleece pullover and Mazzy Star on my iPod, I think I can manage this voyage.

  It’s a foggy day, and the droplets of mist feel cool and perfect on my cheeks as I come down the front steps. Ours is the only building on our block that survived the big earthquake—a fact that makes it apparently more desirable and allows my landlord to charge me a higher rent than if I lived in the identical-looking structure next door, but I still love it. I love my neighborhood too. It’s not quite gentrified, and not quite run-down; freaks and families and semi-wealthy techies have all found their way here and seem to live together with little friction.

  I have to walk past Joe’s apartment on my way to the store. He lives right at the crest of the hill in a ground-level unit, and even though I’m scared he’ll see me and drag me into some nonsensical conversation, I still look in his window as I go by. And there he is, vacuuming his carpet with nothing but a bath towel around his waist and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He just looks at me through his thick glasses and nods, and then returns to pushing his vacuum cleaner.

  The corner market is seriously tiny, and I’m the only one currently shopping here. This place is known to everyone in the neighborhood as the MacGyver store because, inexplicably, a faded poster of Richard Dean Anderson hangs over the magazine rack against the wall. The proprietor, Nabil, is seated on a stool behind the counter in his usual pose with his chin in his hand as he watches the little TV back there. Today it looks like a golf tournament.

  “Hey, Nabil,” I say.

  “Hey,” he says, not looking away from the screen.

  I pay for my Sprite and head back, and Joe is no longer there when I pass his place on the way back down the hill. As I’m breathing in the moist air the haze breaks and the chilly blue sky shows for only a moment, but just as quickly the fog closes up and the street is gray again. Today, I think, I like the gray better.

  Climbing back up the stairs in my place, I can hear someone above coming down. The speed of the footsteps suggests it’s Patrick, and I’m trying to think what I’m going to say when I see him. But halfway up the stairs to the third floor I see jeans, and Patrick never wears jeans; when I reach the landing I find myself looking up at Josh from last night.

  “Hey,” he says, and he’s half smiling. “I was looking for you.”

  “Me? Well, hi? You weren’t looking for Patrick?”

  “He’s not there, either.” Josh leans his hip against the railing and nods up to my floor. “I wanted to see your Murrants. If the offer still stands. If you remember making it.” More of that smile.

  “Oh, I do. It’s…Sure,” I say, and the plastic Sprite bottle, wet with condensation, slips in my hands and I nearly drop it. I can feel my cheeks flushing. “My place is a mess.”

  “I’m used to messy places.” Josh nods toward my hands as I come up next to him. “You know that stuff w
ill kill you, right?”

  I hold up the soda bottle as he’s climbing alongside me. “This? Will it kill me faster than mixed drinks? I might be pretty close already.”

  He seems to think that’s funny. I work the key into the lock. I’m struck, when my door swings open, by how warm it is inside. Did I not notice this temperature before?

  “It’s nice,” Josh says.

  “What?”

  “Your apartment. I like it.”

  “It works.”

  Josh walks around the room, peering down at my things, my books and photos. I straighten the afghan on the back of my couch and try to ignore the way he’s looking at my belongings.

  “You had fun last night,” he says. He picks up a framed picture of Katie and me and looks at it closely. It’s almost aggressive the way he inserts himself into my space.

  “Did I? I mean, are you asking if I had a good time?”

  “No, I’m saying, you and that dark-haired woman, you two looked like you were having fun.” The way he says it makes me wonder if I made a complete ass of myself. He holds the picture frame toward me. “Sister?”

  “Yes. That’s Katie.”

  “Are you twins?”

  “No, no. She’s younger.” And before I think about it, I say, “She’s prettier than I am.”

  Josh laughs as he sets the picture back on my shelf, and I wonder if he’s laughing because I’ve said something stupid. Or does he not believe me? He keeps moving around the living room. I feel tense as I watch him examining my things, and I kind of want him to leave.

  “No,” he says. “You guys could be twins. Are you close?”

  “Very.” I half sit on the arm of my couch. “Are you close to your sister?” Josh just looks at me when I ask him this. “You mentioned her,” I say. “Last night. She has kids?”

  “Oh, yeah. No. We aren’t close at all.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He pauses. “I think she feels my positions on some things are a little extreme.”

  “Your positions are extreme? What positions? What things?”

  Josh just looks at me, and I shift my weight on the arm of the couch. “Lots of things.” Then he looks away. “Emily and I are not close.”

  “Um.”

  “I still love her, though.”

  Josh crouches down in front of my bookshelf, and I can see him cock his head when he sees something there. When he pulls my road atlas from the end, my heart goes tight in my chest.

  “Wait,” I say. I even lift up my hand. “That’s—”

  “Check this out,” he says.

  “—kind of personal.”

  He doesn’t respond to this, just squats there and thumbs methodically through the tattered pages. I’m actually wringing my hands as he does so.

  “Please,” I say.

  Josh looks at me, stares at me; I think he can tell I’m pleading with my eyes but I have no idea what he’s thinking. Then he closes the atlas and slides it back into its place on the bottom shelf, and he rises back up to his full height.

  “May I see the Murrants?”

  “What? Right. Sure.” I’m flustered and relieved. “In here,” I say. He follows me into the bedroom and I pull the rumpled duvet flat as I nod up to the framed print on the wall. “That’s the big one. The little one’s over the dresser.”

  Josh puts his left knee onto my bed and leans in close to the frame. “Oh, wow. This is—” He squints at it and turns to me. “How old is this?”

  “He gave it to me when I graduated from college. So, seven years, at least?”

  Josh moves his fingertips in front of the image, not touching the glass. The print is a series of fanned-out shapes, like leaves or feathers, printed in a dusty green and gray. “Just incredible,” Josh murmurs. “This guy is…these errors in registration, they’re intentional. They give it…you know, that suggestion of depth.” He looks at me again. “Do you know anything about this print?”

  “It’s pretty?” I shrug. “It looks like a peacock?”

  “I mean, did he tell you anything about how he made it?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that.”

  Josh slides his leg off the bed and walks to look at the print over my dresser. This one is smaller, simpler, just a mottled blue sphere. “It’s older, isn’t it? You can tell he was just learning here.”

  “I can’t tell that, but apparently you can.”

  He’s holding his fingers close to this one too. “You can see it.” Josh stands up straight and looks at me. “Hey, I’m doing a seminar Tuesday night at the Art Academy, if you’d like to come,” he says. “Eight o’clock. It’s like intro to litho. Basically I’m doing it for donor wives, but some fun people might be there too. And there’s a studio session Thursday if you’re—”

  Donor wives? “I don’t know,” I say. I don’t want to be rude. “I’m not sure what I’ve got going on this week.”

  “It’s up to you. I’ll put you on the list; come by if you want. You know the Academy, right? Go to the Graduate Center.” I follow a few steps behind as he goes to the door. “Thanks for letting me see those prints.”

  When he’s gone, there’s an absence created, as well as a feeling of relief. Order is restored again. I go to the shelf in my living room and pick up the photo that Josh had held, the picture of Katie and me. It’s from a hike we took in New Hampshire—some stranger on the trail snapped it for us—and we’re sitting on a fallen tree, side by side in shorts and sport tops with the sleeves of our sweatshirts tied around our waists. We’re smiling big, toothy smiles, and Katie has her arms around me.

  The bottle of soda is still in my hands, getting warm. I twist it open while I look at the picture, and with the crack of the top opening the sticky stuff inside fizzes and overflows and splatters to the hardwood floor. Shit.

  8

  The kayaks are gone when I get to work Monday morning, and Mike’s two sons are playing in our little lobby area. They’re four and seven, I think; both of them spastic and adorable tow-heads. They’re kneeling over some toys, and they both look up at me and shout, “Hi, Jessica!” before returning to stomping their plastic dinosaurs over the old magazines on the coffee table. Carol, our receptionist-slash-reference-librarian, looks up from her desk and smiles.

  “No school today, Walt?” I ask the older one.

  “It isn’t starting again ’til tomorrow,” Walt says. He’s driving a toy car up and down his leg. “And butt face didn’t want to go to daycare.”

  “Don’t call me that!” cries James, the little brother.

  “Butt face.”

  “Walter!” Mike shouts from the back. “I don’t want to hear you talking like that anymore.”

  “Butt face,” Walt whispers.

  James starts to cry, and I leave because Mike is coming and I’m about to start laughing and don’t want to send the wrong message. Mike is wearing a tie, which is unusual, but he’s looking pretty serious as he walks past so I don’t say anything about it. I sling my bag onto the canvas chair in the corner of my spacious cube, and slip off my shoes as the computer boots up. Katie opens a chat window, saying “Hey” almost as soon as I’m logged on.

  “What’s up, skipper?” I type.

  “Nautical jokes getting old already,” she types back. “But aye, aye. There. Said it. Now, beware: Mom’s on the warpath. Has she called you yet?”

  “What? No?”

  “She’s going to call to ask you to move. She’s worked up about that memorial thing.”

  It takes me a moment to remember that Katie is referring to the hundred and eighteen seconds of silence planned by the city for ten-fifteen this morning. One morbid second for each victim, precisely a week after the fact. I think a better memorial would involve two minutes of noise, but I was not consulted on this.

  “Christ,” I type. I can hear Mike talking in his calm but firm dad voice out in the lobby.

  “…both of you to find a place and spend a little time apart, and thi
nk about this,” he says. “Okay?”

  “Is she being hysterical-Mom or angry-Mom?”

  “Mostly hysterical, with some indignation thrown in. Expect to hear from her after the TV coverage ends.”

  “Great. Thanks for the warning. Going to work now.”

  I’m not really going to work, though; I close the chat and open a browser window to see if Gretchen has updated the PitchBitch. There’s a new post, but I don’t have a chance to read it because I look up and see little James staring at me from the entryway of my cube.

  “What’s up, Jimmy?”

  “May I please sit in here while I draw?” he asks in his wisp of a voice. “I promise I’ll be quiet.”

  “Of course you can.” He’s so cute and polite, how could I say no? I reach over and pull my bag off the chair and he hops in and gets right to work with some crayons and a legal pad.

  The subject of Gretchen’s latest, posted at 8:19 this morning, has me a little confused. “THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND?” it says. The rest of the post is equally confusing: “Or is the friend of my friend my enemy? Help, help. Working new tagline, trying to breathe new life into a tired slogan. It’s hopeless. By the way, Saturday w/ Jazzboy et al. was kicking. Updates TK.”

  I read the post again, and again once more. Is that enemy/friend thing somehow referring to me? I should call her, but I feel not quite right about it. Is there some plan, some significance, regarding her pursuit of Patrick?

  Am I the enemy, or the friend?

  I really should call, but not yet. And anyway, as I’m sitting there, I sense I’m being watched. I turn and see James looking at me, unblinking, with his hands resting on the pad of paper in his lap.