Rel hands her the pipe and I guess Tina convinces herself that it’s a fine idea, because she takes a long deep pull and her face relaxes instantly. She hands the pipe over to me. I take a deep pull just like hers and end up sputtering and coughing, and while I’m trying to breathe I fall backward into a potted tropical plant.
“Ahahaahaha the pot made you fall into a pot!” Rel can’t stop laughing, and she says it over and over again like an autistic child: “Pot pot pot pot pot.”
Tina and I are laughing, too, though the edges of my vision are starting to get a little fuzzy, and then Rel says, “It’s such a fucking gorgeous night. Let’s go to the beach!” It’s true: The day’s heat is no longer rising from the sidewalks, and there’s a slight breeze against my bare legs. It’s not yet August, when the entire city becomes soggy and fetid and unbearable. These July nights are perfect and fleeting.
I use Rel’s back as a beacon to guide me down the stairs at Second Avenue, the straps of her sundress crisscrossing daintily over her shoulder blades. I don’t really understand where we’re going, just that I’m with Rel and Tina and everything seems hilarious. My apartment is just a few stops away and so I can gracefully hop off and go home to Peter in ten minutes or so. I look over at Tina and she’s grinning broadly. Her face in repose is generally so reserved—lips pursed, eyes unsmiling—that seeing her look happy is infectious. For reasons obscure to me Tina starts singing Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” really loudly right after we travel under the East River into Brooklyn. A bearded dude gets off at York Street, chuckling to himself, and then we’re all alone in the car, so Rel and I join in, reaching a shouty crescendo with the song’s last line: “AND YOU SAY / I ONLY HEAR WHAT I WANT TO . . .”
Suddenly I realize the train is outside, and I look out the thinly cracked window at the broad boulevards below. I start smelling the Atlantic’s particular brine. I can tell that we’re getting farther and farther from the tiki bar. I also realize that we’ve blown past my subway stop and I don’t even know how far. I take out my phone and see that I have two missed calls and three texts from Peter. The texts are increasingly anxious.
Peter Rice (8:48 PM): Hey! Hope you’re having fun with the girls! Call me when you have a second.
Peter Rice (10:55 PM): Haven’t heard from you. Have a big day tomorrow so I’m getting into bed.
Peter Rice (12:59 AM): Can’t sleep. Where are you??? Hello??
My iPhone says it’s 1:22 now. “Shit, I have to call Peter!” I exclaim. My face flushes three times, first with guilt because he’s probably sitting at home worrying about me; immediately after because I’m annoyed that his feelings have interrupted my buzz; finally, a third time because I feel guilty for being annoyed.
“Busted!” Rel shouts.
I fumble at my phone, finally getting to Peter’s number. He picks up after one ring.
“Alex, where are you?”
“Hey, baby! I’m on the F!” I say it brightly, hoping that he’ll hear that I’m kind of drunk but still safe, and he won’t want to start a fight over the phone.
“How are you getting reception?” he asks, the confusion outweighing the palpable concern in his tone.
“We’re outside!”
“What do you mean you’re outside?” Peter’s voice is rising, incredulous.
“We’re going to the beach?” It comes out as a question because I still am not 100 percent sure where we’re headed.
“Are you going to Coney Island at one in the goddamn morning?”
Rel is sitting next to me and can hear what Peter is saying. “We sure are!” she says, loud enough for him to hear.
“Alex.” He says it evenly but I detect a tinge of condescension. The tone sets me on edge and instinctively makes me want to contradict him.
“Mmmm?”
“This is a really bad idea.”
“It’s going to be okay, I promise!”
“I’m too tired to argue with you. Have fun on needle beach with a bunch of crackheads,” he says, and hangs up.
I can’t tell if he’s pissed that I didn’t call him earlier or if he’s more worried that I’m going to get hurt among the syringes and dirty condoms that litter the Coney Island boardwalk. Or maybe it’s that he’s a tiny bit jealous that I’m out with Rel and Tina while he’s in bed by eleven so he can be shiny and fresh for work in the morning. His call takes me out of the moment, and I look down at the mottled floor. It’s unclear how for long I’ve spaced out for when Tina shouts, “Oh my God we’re here!”
The last stop on the train is Stillwell Avenue. We walk out of the subway onto Surf Avenue and the smell of the ocean smacks us in the face. The last time I was at Coney Island was for a big music festival and the clean sea waft was marred by the overwhelming scent d’Portapotty. Not tonight. The rickety wooden Cyclone looms over us as we stroll. It’s light enough for our path to be clear, but dark enough so that we can’t see the hot dog wrappers and the discarded bottles of suntan lotion that surely surround us. Tina seems to know where she’s going, so Rel and I hang back and watch her walk languidly toward the boardwalk. Rel reaches for my hand and holds it the way a small child would.
When she spots the beach, Tina takes off her shoes and breaks into a run. Rel drops my hand and follows on her heels. I start running, too. The only people in sight are a couple of Russian teenagers huddled together on a bench off to our left. They don’t even look up as we come whooping past, throwing our light summer frocks and our canvas bags onto the sand.
Tina’s the first one in the bracing Atlantic salt water. “IIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE,” she shrieks as she hits the waves. I’m already running so fast into the surf I don’t have time to register the temperature until I’m struggling to catch my breath in the chest-deep water.
Rel is smart enough to see us shudder and stays in the shallows. We join her back in the surf and loll around in the sand, letting the waves wash over us. For such a fashionista, Tina is wearing some seriously dumpy undergarments: Her baggy white Hanes droop around her hips. Rel’s yanking up the waistband of her boy-cut briefs, and I’m trying to clear the sand out of my unassuming black bra.
Simultaneously, and for no apparent reason, we stop fidgeting. For what seems like forever we sit in silence and listen to the sound of the ocean. The salty air on my exposed skin makes me feel almost achingly alive, diametrically opposite to my days spent in our basement dwelling, shackled to my laptop.
Finally, Rel says, “This is the best possible end to a shitty day.” Tina and I nod our heads in solemn agreement.
An early morning chill has descended onto the beach and I start shivering. I get up and paw around for my muumuu, which now has fine grains of sand attached to all the eyelets and sticks unattractively to my damp body when I pull it on. I reach down and gather my bag, instinctively grabbing for my iPhone. It’s been about forty minutes since we arrived at Coney Island, and it feels like that’s the longest period of time I’ve been away from an electronic device since I started working this job.
I wipe the sand away from the phone’s screen and find another text from Peter.
Peter Rice (2:34 AM): Please just come home.
TUESDAY
Chapter Three
The bring bring of my iPhone jolts me out of a sweaty half slumber at 6:20. I would estimate I’ve been asleep for about two and a half hours. I stretch my legs and feel sand crunching in between my toes. My first coherent thought is, Why is there so much sand in this bed? And then the previous evening’s activities come roaring back to me.
I look over at Peter’s side of the bed and realize that it’s a mass of blankets and a depression where his body should be. I heave myself out of bed and go out into the living room, where Peter’s sitting in the crack between the couch cushions, drinking coffee with a blank expression. The burgeoning crow’s-feet around his pale eyes look deeper than usual, probably because he barely slept last night. And I know it’s my fault.
“Hi,” I say, padding over to him. With ever
y shuffle-step my head throbs. I pick the salty muumuu up from the floor and slip it on. Tiny grains of sand skitter across our wood floors. “I’m really sorry about last night. I was freaking out about that hate site and I wanted to unwind with the girls.”
“It’s fine,” Peter says tersely.
“I don’t really think it’s fine,” I say, sitting down next to him.
“I’m not trying to control you,” Peter says. “But you can’t disappear like that for hours and hours and not tell me where you are.”
“I said I was sorry!” I reply, a nasal whine appearing in my voice, which I hate. I collect myself and say, “I promise I won’t let it happen again.”
“It’s more than that. I don’t want to sound like your dad.” Peter winces and pauses; he sometimes forgets about my father, and always feels guilty when he does. “But I feel like those girls are a bad influence on you. You’ve never done something like this before. Coney Island?”
I don’t want to tell him that right after my dad died I used to do stuff like this all the time. So instead I become defensive. “Seriously?! It’s not like we went to Baghdad. We went to the beach. And it’s not like I was alone. Don’t be so provincial.”
“Fine.” This time when he says it he just sounds resigned, and he stands up as if he’s about to leave.
“Peter, come on.”
“I don’t want to fight you on this.”
“Can’t you appreciate the extenuating circumstances?”
“Sort of,” he grudgingly says. Then his tone abruptly shifts. “I did read the hate blog last night.”
“What? How did you even find it? I didn’t give you the URL!” I am genuinely surprised, and then concerned.
“Promise not to get mad?”
“Maybe.”
“I Googled ‘Alex Lyons sucks’ and it was the first thing that came up.”
“Fuck.” But I have to laugh.
“Have you looked at it yet?”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t know if you should. There’s some pretty awful stuff on there.”
“I’m a big girl, I can take it,” I tell him, with zero certainty that it’s true.
“They’re just anonymous losers. Who cares what they think?”
I sit with that thought for a second. I don’t want to tell Peter that it’s not what they think—though that can be hurtful—it’s what they could potentially reveal that’s so worrisome. There are probably things I don’t even remember doing that could be dug up and framed in a way that would make me look like a monster. But instead of following that horrifying train of thought, I decide to change the subject.
“What about you? Are you going to be okay at work today even though you didn’t get much sleep?”
Peter sighs. “Yeah, I think it will be fine. I got a few hours and you know they have that fancy new Nespresso machine at the office. I’ll just mainline caffeine all day.” He starts palming the ceiling with his hand as we talk. The downside of living in the garden apartment is that our ceilings are so low I can touch them with the tips of my fingers. When he’s anxious, Peter puts his whole hand up there. His ire seems to have dissipated, but I’m pretty sure he isn’t going to fully forgive me for a few days. Still, I feel like at least one fire has been put out.
Peter walks over to the kitchen to put his coffee cup in the sink.
“I love you,” I tell him.
“I love you, too,” Peter says, and bends down to kiss me on the forehead.
I hate having even the smallest tiff with Peter, since I’m so grateful for his presence in my life. In the months before Peter and I met, I felt lost in such a profound way I couldn’t even voice it. I dated a bunch of clones of my terrible ex-boyfriend Caleb—artists in every different medium. I went out every night and was drinking even more than when Caleb and I were together.
What brought me out of my downward spiral was the night I went home with this nebbishy, sleazy guy from Rev named Adrian who always wore an out-of-date leather jacket and tried to pass as twenty-nine though he was probably in his midthirties. Adrian was a writer for the magazine who came into the office only occasionally, but whenever he did he would loiter by my desk and ask me to go to concerts with him. I always turned him down, but when Adrian asked me to a secret Magnetic Fields show just after my dad died, I said, “Sure, why not.”
I don’t remember much of the show because I started chugging whiskey as soon as I got there. When Adrian asked me to go home with him, I slurred, “Whatever,” and the next thing I knew a cab was ferrying us to his Lower East Side bachelor pad. As I watched this man I wasn’t even attracted to roll on a condom, I knew I was about to cry. I pleaded with my drunk self: Don’t cry in front of this troll. But as soon as we started having sex, I couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down my face. What was I doing in bed with this loser? What was I doing drinking and snorting my life away?
To his credit, Adrian noticed I was crying and stopped, but he looked annoyed. “Are you okay?” he asked. I shook my head and started crying harder. I started crying so hard that I had to run to the bathroom and throw up. I stayed in that sticky bachelor bathroom for half an hour, splashing cold water on my face and trying to pull myself together. When I emerged, Adrian was fully clothed in beat-up corduroys and a Samples T-shirt, and I could barely look him in the eye.
“Do you need me to get you a cab?” he asked, by then genuinely concerned.
“No, I’m okay,” I told him, and rushed out of there.
The next day I had already turned this mishap into a comedy routine—“Having sex with Adrian makes me puke and cry”—but I knew that I had reached some kind of turning point. I only went out after work to DJ, and I stopped drinking more than one cocktail a night. I spent those morning hours before I had to be at Rev buffing up my résumé and sending out links to my best posts, hoping that some other publication would take notice so that I could start truly fulfilling those creative ambitions my parents had sacrificed so much for. My mom couldn’t pay for my health insurance anymore—there was now only one income to save for her retirement when the expectation had been for two—so I needed to find something more lucrative, and fast.
I was so down on the idea of writing professionally, I even started applying to advertising agencies and branding firms. Copywriting was a kind of writing, I convinced myself, and one that could even give me a 401(k). When I told my mother about these applications on the phone, she sighed deeply. “I guess you should do what you feel like you have to do,” she said. “But if you want my advice, you shouldn’t waste your talent on diaper ads.”
A few weeks into my new shit-together regime, I was DJing at a small bar in Park Slope, near where Jane and I lived together. It wasn’t a particularly fashionable place—its only nod to décor was a string of chili pepper lights ringing the backyard—but they were paying me $200 for the evening and advertising me as if I were some semifamous DJ diva just because I worked at Rev.
I had just finished a set and was getting a club soda at the bar when a sweet-looking preppy guy with nearly black hair and very blue eyes appeared next to me. He was wearing a button-down shirt, acceptably stylish jeans, and Tretorn sneakers. He basically looked like all the guys who ignored me at Manning. I glanced at him and then turned away.
“Can I buy her drink?” he asked the bartender, undeterred.
“It’s free for me because I’m DJing,” I told him, hoping he would just go away.
“Well, can I buy you a drink somewhere else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a strange guy and I don’t even know your name.” I was still in a vulnerable place then, and I wasn’t in the mood to fend off creepsters in shady bars. I saw his crisp exterior, dark hair, and square jaw, and (this really says something about my headspace back then) my first thought was, He looks like the “Preppy Killer,” Robert Chambers.
“I’m Peter,” he said, extending his hand to me.
“Alex,” I said in a way I hoped telegraphed that I wanted him to leave me alone.
“I really liked your set and your DJ name. DJ Divine Hammer? A Breeders reference, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, semi-impressed that he’d gotten it, considering how well pressed his shirt was.
“And you write for Rev?”
“Yeah—how did you know?” I was both delighted and slightly freaked out by this. I’d never been recognized by my writing before, so that part felt amazing, but the piece of me that read the New York Post too much was still thinking, Is this guy going to take me to Prospect Park and stab me a bunch of times?
“I read your stuff every day,” he said.
“You and about fifteen other people.” As I looked at his genuine smile and his non-murderer-y eyes, the squickiness I was feeling started to dissipate.
“I think it’s really funny,” he said, cocking his head toward me.
I was truly flattered by this, and we started talking about the bands that we liked. It turned out that this prep could out-indie me: He knew about obscure yet highly influential bands that had played a single show in someone’s basement in Milwaukee in 1977. “I have that 9 Fingers bootleg everyone always talks about,” he said, bragging.
“So what do you do?” I asked, bowled over by his level of rock nerdery.
“I’m a calligraphy grad student at Pratt.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that at first. I was trying to avoid artists, but also, that sounded like the most useless and idiotic graduate degree I had ever heard of.
“That sounds . . . interesting,” I finally managed to say.
He laughed. “I’m just joking. I work in finance. I thought some artsy shit would play better with a girl like you.”
Sad Desk Salad Page 4
