by Reid, Penny
“You any better at holding your liquor? Last time I saw you drink you passed out from five shots of vodka.”
“I didn’t pass out. I puked on my SAT proctor.” I wasn’t upset about it—not anymore. I just knew that when Jem was around, it was important to be as accurate and precise as possible.
“Whatever.”
“Why are you here?” I took a long swallow of my drink.
“I told you I was coming to visit.”
We stared at each other for several long moments, and then I asked her again. “Why are you here?”
She straightened slowly and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m visiting Chicago, and I need a place to stay for a few days.”
I shook my head. “You’ve been in Chicago for weeks. Why now?”
Her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly as her chin lifted. “What do you know about that?”
I took another swallow of my juice then set it down on the counter. “I know a lot.”
As she studied me, I noted that her glare was hard and guarded, just as I remembered it. She spoke slowly as though choosing her words carefully. “Who told you I’ve been in Chicago for weeks?”
“Jon.” I rolled my glass between my palms to keep my hands busy, wanting to move, wanting to escape, wanting to punch her in the face, wanting to eat a granola bar.
Her expression didn’t change; her gaze didn’t even waver. “He’s an asshole, you know.”
“So are you.” That granola bar was sounding better and better. I set my drink on the counter and started pilfering the pantry.
“Yeah, but I don’t pretend about it. He justifies all his douche-baggy behaviors by calling it love. Get me a glass.”
I glanced over my shoulder, watched her unscrew the tequila. “Now you’re going to drink my tequila?”
“Yes.”
I shrugged then moved to the cabinet that held the cups; passed one to her then turned my attention back to the Hunt for the Red Granola.
“What was the plan, Jem? Why did you do it?” I didn’t precisely care why she slept with Jon. Rather, I didn’t like the silence, and it seemed like a reasonable topic of conversation given the circumstances.
“Blackmail, of course.”
“Of course.” I found the granola bars and pulled out two, passed her one and ripped the other open with my teeth. I always struggled with opening single-serving items such as bags of M&M’s or condoms.
“He, of course, fucks it all up by telling you the truth.” Jem poured a hefty amount of tequila into the glass but didn’t drink.
“Why the blackmail?”
“I needed the money.”
“Why?”
Jem held my gaze for a long moment, sniffed, and then moved her eyes over the contents of the small kitchen as though taking inventory. She took a swallow of the tequila but didn’t grimace.
I took this opportunity to study her; for the first time I could recall in a long time, Jem looked patently uneasy. Abruptly, I found that I was enjoying the silence. I enjoyed smacking my lips when I took a sip of my Tequila and orange juice, and I enjoyed the way the loud crunch of the granola bar sounded magnified by her tense disquiet.
When it became clear that she had no intention of answering my question, I decided to ask, with my mouth full of crunchy candied oats, “Can I guess?” A few of the loose pieces of my cereal bar flew from my lips and landed on the counter. It was obnoxious and gross, and I loved it.
Jem shifted her weight from one foot to the other, swirling her neat tequila, still not meeting my gaze. “Sure.”
“Ok, I’ll take three guesses.” I set my food on the counter, gulped my orange juice, and cracked my knuckles. “Guess number one: You need the money to go to college.”
Her eyes lifted to mine; a small, genuinely amused smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “Yep, that’s it. I got into MIT, but I just need the two hundred and fifty grand to cover the books for my first semester.”
I returned her smile. I couldn’t remember the last time I smiled at her, sincere or not.
I shook my head slowly. “No, no. That’s not it. Let me try again.” I cleared my throat, pursed my lips, and narrowed my eyes. “You plan to start a nonprofit organization and need the startup principal.”
She nodded. “Ok, you got me. I want to help orphans learn how to fish for lobsters. If they don’t learn about lobster fishing from me, they’ll just learn about it on the streets.”
“It’s not generally called lobster fishing. The main method for catching the Norway lobster is trawling, although the large Homarus lobsters are caught almost always with lobster traps.”
“Fuck off with the Wikipedia bullshit, Janie.”
My smile broadened, but I could feel the bitterness behind it; my mouth tasted like vinegar. “Ah, but I think that’s not it either. Ok,” I placed my index finger on my chin. I was surprised that she was playing along, joking with me, and it occurred to me that Jem might have no expectation that I would guess correctly. I inhaled deeply. “Let me think…”
“Maybe it’s both of those. Maybe I want to go to college so I can start a nonprofit.”
I snapped my fingers, almost startling her. “I’ve got it!”
“You found me out. I want to adopt all the Dalmatians in Boston and turn them into a fur coat.” Her voice was, of course, deadpan as she said this. Jem lifted the tequila to her lips.
“No…” I hesitated, and then took another deep breath. “You’re running from a skinhead named Seamus who has crazy neck tattoos, and he wants to kill you.”
Jem held perfectly still, her eyes boring into mine, her glass mid-air. I allowed several seconds to pass. I noted that she didn’t appear to be amused anymore.
My hand found and closed over the discarded granola bar wrapper. I crinkled it with my fingers and continued. “And you need the money so you can hide.”
Jem took another gulp of the brown liquid then lowered the glass. Her expression was inscrutable. This was the Jem I knew. I couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t look at the world (and me) with a granite-like inflexibility. Her chest expanded slowly as if she was taking a calming breath.
“How do you know that?” So quiet; her voice was so quiet that I almost didn’t hear the words.
I tried to mirror her impassive mask, but I knew I was failing. I could feel the heat of resentment pour out of my fingertips and eyeballs. I felt the chilling warmth of it in every breath I took.
“Lucky guess.” I licked my lips; they tasted sweet from the orange juice.
We stared at each other in silence for a long time. I wanted to yell at her. I wanted to ask her if she ever thought about anyone but herself. I wanted to ask her when and why she decided to be the crazy Morris girl instead of the sweet, or gregarious, or well-mannered, or any other version of girl she could have chosen to be besides crazy.
She broke the silence. “I need the money.”
I sighed and glanced at my almost empty glass. My fingertips rubbed my forehead. I was going to have a headache.
“I know.”
“No, Janie, I really need the money.”
My gaze flickered to hers, and I was surprised to find that fear had replaced some, not all, of the boulder of inflexibility. I sighed.
“I don’t have any money.”
“But Jon has money.”
I shook my head. “I doubt he’ll give you any money.”
“But he’ll give it to you. If you ask him, he’ll give you anything.”
I bit my top lip to silence my abrupt and unexpected urge to scream at her. The impulse was so sudden I had to swallow. My hands were shaking.
I was angry.
I couldn’t speak, so I shook my head again.
“Fuck, Janie! It’s the least he can do after cheating on you.”
And then I laughed. At first it was a short burst, completely involuntary. Then, when I met her glare, another hysterical giggle spewed forth and I was lost. Soon I was laughing so hard that my
side and my jaw hurt. I had to stagger to the couch to keep from falling to the floor.
Nothing about this situation was funny. I was pretty certain I had just cracked up.
“So, what? You’re not going to forgive me for sleeping with your douchebag boyfriend?”
My mouth fell open. I didn’t think it was possible for her behavior to surprise me at this point. I was wrong.
However, I was so practiced at numbing my feelings around my family—in their presence, when I thought about them, when I recalled my childhood—that my surprise was short-lived. It was like looking at them and my past through a microscope; they were an unfortunate science experiment.
“Jem.” I lifted my hands from my lap and pressed my palms to my chest. “I can’t forgive you if you’re not sorry.”
Her green eyes narrowed into slits. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Her head bobbed in a small movement, and her voice was quiet. “I’m not sorry. I’d do it again. And if you had another rich boyfriend who I thought I could get money from, I’d sleep with him too.”
Her words made me flinch. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at her.
Her raspy voice was closer when she next spoke. “We’re not so different, you know.”
I didn’t open my eyes at this ridiculous statement; instead, I leaned further into the couch and willed her gone.
She continued. “I don’t think Jon is a guy who is as faithful as his options. He thinks you’re it; you’re the one. You don’t seem to care that he cheated on you, and you don’t give a shit about him.”
I huffed at this. “One minute you say he’s an asshole for cheating on me, and the next minute you’re telling me I’m the bad guy for not caring enough that he cheated on me. Jem, I broke up with him.”
“Yeah, but you don’t seem too depressed about it.”
I opened my eyes, but I was slumped so deeply into the sofa that my gaze made it no higher than the edge of the coffee table. “This isn’t going to work. I’m still not going to ask Jon for the money.”
Jem’s face was unsurprisingly void of emotion. “You are just like me, Janie. You left Jon, an annoyingly nice guy who you dated for years, and who loves you more than anything, and now you feel nothing but relief; am I right? You’re relieved that you don’t have to be bothered about taking his feelings into account anymore. You have the means to save your baby sister from certain death, and you can’t even muster enough pretend sentiment to try. You’re incapable of feeling any depth of emotion, Janie, just like me—and just like mom.”
I met her gaze calmly, even though her words met their intended target with swift precision. Jem’s overly simplified assessment of the Jon situation was very close to my current view of reality, but I wasn’t yet finished sorting through all the reasons why that relationship ended. It was true; I hadn’t been as attached to Jon as he may have been to me. It was also true that I was feeling mostly relief about the end of the relationship. However, he cheated on me, then tried to lie about it, and then had me fired. Those were all his decisions.
I knew that I wasn’t blameless, but I was not the first girl in the history of forever to stay with a guy because he was ideal on paper. For the love of Thor! He was my first boyfriend. I was allowed to make mistakes.
The other charge, about not having enough pretend sentiment to save Jem, was the one that made me furious. That fury reassured me that I was capable of emotional depth.
I hated her.
I shifted my gaze from hers, and when I spoke, I spoke to the room.
“You can stay here if you want. I usually sleep on the couch, but you can have it.”
She was quiet for a long moment, and I knew she was debating whether to push me further. To my surprise, she didn’t.
“Where will you sleep?”
I inhaled, then released, a deep breath. “Elizabeth is at the hospital for a shift, so I’ll sleep in her bed.”
“You’re still friends with Elizabeth?”
I nodded, hesitated, and then lifted my eyes to hers. Her expression was unchanged, still inflexible, but her eyes moved between mine with a touch of approaching interest. It was a subtle yet rare demonstration of feeling.
Jem swallowed, licked her lips. “That’s good. She seems to care about you.”
“She does.” For reasons I couldn’t immediately understand, Jem’s words made my eyes sting, so I blinked.
Jem twisted her lips to the side and let her arms fall from her chest. With a small sigh, she walked to the entryway and picked up a black leather jacket.
“I can’t wear this anymore. You can keep it or whatever. Get rid of it. I don’t care.” She tossed it to me on the couch and I automatically caught it; it smelled like her: cigarettes, clean soap, and violence. Memories careened over and through me so suddenly that I had to grip the jacket to steady myself.
I loved her once.
When she was little, maybe three or four years old, I used to give her piggyback rides around our neighborhood, or pull her in a wagon behind my bike. She liked everything fast.
She started to smoke when she was eleven. There was nobody to tell her no, even though I tried. She laughed at me then. Growing up in the same house, I often felt she was laughing at me. It didn’t anger me. It made me sad.
The stinging in my eyes intensified. I bit then pulled my top lip between my teeth. I couldn’t speak; there was a giant knot in my throat. I watched her as she picked up my brown wool coat from the rack and pulled it over her shoulders.
“I’m taking this.”
My mouth hitched to the side and I leaned back against the couch, her black leather jacket still on my lap.
“That’s fine,” I responded, even though I knew she wasn’t asking my permission.
“I’m leaving. I don’t know if…” Jem fingered the middle button of my coat, her eyes rigid but intense. She buttoned the coat.
When she didn’t continue, I cleared my throat and found my voice. “Where will you go?”
Jem shrugged and shook her head; she stuffed her hands into the fur-lined pockets of my jacket. “I don’t know.”
Without pausing, without a wave or a smile or a goodbye, Jem turned and left.
My door made a soft, final click as she closed it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I slept hard and had strange dreams.
The dreams were the troubling kind where I thought the action and events were genuine, but on waking and in retrospect, I realized they were obviously completely implausible.
The one I remembered most intensely on waking was about losing my teeth. The fragments of bone fell out of my mouth every time I opened it to speak, and they ran away, though they had no legs, which, in the dream, sent me into a panic.
There is nothing quite like watching one’s own legless teeth running away.
Tourists kept accidentally stepping on my teeth. I was forced to chase my molars and canines down Michigan Avenue while dodging black-socked sightseers wearing shorts, white Keds, and rainbow visors. When my alarm went off, I actually ran my tongue over the back of my teeth to make sure they were all still present, in my mouth, and securely situated.
By the time I arrived at work and greeted Keira at the front desk, the last miens of my dental-nightmare had almost completely dispersed. However, a lingering sense of disquiet and a completely irrational foreboding remained. My chest felt tight, heavy, and uncomfortable, as if I had some terrible combination of bronchitis and gastroenteritis.
During the short walk down the hall to my office, instead of dwelling on my increasingly complex feelings for Quinn or the unpleasant altercation with my sister, my mind ambled. I wondered about and made a mental note to check on the content of carpet fibers. More precisely, what made the current generation of carpets stain resistant? Were eco-friendly approaches to carpet manufacturing currently the norm? What country could claim the title as leader in office-carpet exports?
Still studying the carpet, I opened the closed door to my of
fice and was startled out of my floor-focus by the presence of unexpected company.
Olivia was inside my office standing behind my desk. Her back was stiff and her eyes were wide as they met mine; her hand flew to her chest, and she sucked in a loud breath.
I hesitated, frowned, and glanced at the name outside the office to ensure I had the right door. When I confirmed that it was, indeed, my office, and she was, indeed, in my office, I returned my gaze to her and waited for an explanation.
A protracted period of silence stretched as we eyeballed each other. She looked very well assembled, as usual, and, even though I was the one to find her unexpectedly in my office with the door closed, she appeared to be waiting for me to explain my presence.
I waited two beats longer, then lifted my eyebrows as my chin dipped. “Well?”
“Can I help you?” Olivia crossed her arms over her chest and leaned her hip against my desk.
I blinked at her and wondered if I were still dreaming. “What are you doing in my office?”
“It’s not your office; it doesn’t belong to you; it’s the company’s office.”
She huffed.
She actually huffed.
It was a breathy sound, overly exaggerated, and combined with a bit of an exhaled snort.
I crossed my arms and mimicked her stance, mostly to hide the fact that my hands were clenched in fists. “Olivia. What are you doing in the office that has been assigned to me by the company, with all my papers and confidential reports, with the door closed?”
She raised a single, impressively well-groomed eyebrow. “I’m looking for the updated schematic of the Las Vegas space.”
I shook my head. “It hasn’t been sent to us by the group in Las Vegas yet; they said they would email it by Friday.”
“Oh. Well, then, just send it over to me when you get it. No one can move forward with the new plans until you send it to the group.” Olivia’s tone and manner were so flippant that I almost actually felt like it was my fault that the client hadn’t yet sent the schematic.
I clenched my jaw. “As soon as I receive it from the client, I will distribute it to group.”
Olivia issued me a tight-lipped non-smile and moved passed me into the hallway without any further remark.
