O Beautiful

by Jung Yun

  The television in the next room turns on, followed by two loud thumps in quick succession, like boots being taken off and dropped on the floor. One of her many neighbors has returned. At first, she thought she only had one—the man who kept coughing and singing in the shower. But over the course of the evening, she’s heard several others coming and going. How they get any rest over there, she doesn’t know. They’re constantly slamming doors and listening to the TV at full volume, with no consideration for each other, much less her. She gets up from her desk and moves toward the window to avoid the evening news broadcasting through the walls.

  “You said there was something about the Muellers—”

  “Oh, right.” He takes another drink. “The wife—she just seemed a little off to me. I got the sense it wasn’t exactly your typical marriage.”

  Amy Mueller’s husband, Bill, sold the mineral rights to their farm to help pay for his medical bills. Shortly after he passed away, a Dallas-based company named EnerGia notified her that they intended to start drilling two new wells on her property. Mrs. Mueller sued EnerGia to invalidate the agreement, but the court ruled against her on the grounds that Mr. Mueller had never added her name to one of the documents of incorporation for the farm. Forty-plus years they’d worked that land together, and she apparently had no legal right to be consulted. None of this strikes Elinor as particularly unusual though. Her mother owned nothing during all the years she was married to her father. She took nothing when she left.

  “What do you mean by ‘not your typical marriage’?”

  “I don’t know. It was just a feeling I got from our phone conversation. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself when you meet her.”

  Richard sounds tired and short-tempered. She thought he’d called to check in on her before the interviews he’d scheduled, but he doesn’t seem interested in talking about them at all. She fishes around in her pack and pulls out a cigarette. Her last, unfortunately. She leans out the open window to light it, feeling the warm, humid night against her skin. Beats of music from nearby bars compete against each other. She hears heavy, relentless thumps of bass and imagines sweaty bodies on dimly lit dance floors, their fists pumping in the air.

  “You’re still smoking, I see. Or should I say ‘hear’?”

  She moves her mouth away from the phone as she exhales. “I am.”

  “You’re going to regret that one day.”

  She takes one last drag and drops the cigarette into the cup on the ledge. The water inside is now a filthy, sooty gray. “I know.”

  “Just wait. When you’re sixty and breathing through a tube in your neck, you’ll remember I told you so.”

  He’s in one of his moods again. She almost forgot what they were like. Anything related to aging always sent Richard on a rapid downward spiral. Elinor didn’t understand why until she looked at his photo albums and clip books. Flipping through the pages, she realized that he’d bloomed late, both physically and professionally. It wasn’t until his early forties that his angular face began to look interesting instead of severe. And while men his age started losing their hair, Richard’s turned gray and lustrous. At work, he’d been a reliable but seemingly underappreciated business reporter for the New York Times, laboring away in relative obscurity for over fifteen years. But then the Exxon Valdez struck the shore of Prince William Sound while he was vacationing in Alaska, and he had the good fortune of being one of the first journalists to arrive on the scene. His coverage of the oil spill launched his career as a features writer, which led to a book contract and the lecture circuit, and then three more books and an endowed faculty position. It also led to the end of his marriage and a succession of attractive girlfriends, none of whom appeared in his albums for long. Whenever Elinor studied his photos, she noticed how Richard looked so much happier and more confident as he aged. She assumes he wants to cling to this life, which he’s only had twenty-odd years of, compared to forty years of the life he had before he became this version of himself. If this is one of the effects of his blooming late, she wonders what it means that she bloomed so early.

  “Hello?” he says, too loudly. “Are you even listening?”

  “I am.”

  “Did you hear me ask how your interview went today?”

  “It was fine.”

  “And you used my questions?”

  “Some, yes.”

  “Some?”

  She hears the pique budding in his voice. “Most … by the way, do you remember why you kept those articles about Leanne Lowell in your file? She was that Avery woman, the runner, who went missing a few years ago?”

  He doesn’t say anything for a while. Elinor shakes her empty pack of cigarettes, wishing she had just one more hidden inside.

  “That’s what a dump file is for,” he finally says. “Things you keep in case they’re useful later.”

  “But they never found her, right?” She’s not sure why she phrased this in the form of a question, as if she doesn’t know. All she’s been doing for the past four hours is looking up articles about Leanne Lowell. There were no further sightings, no charges filed, no people held accountable for her disappearance, no evidence of a death. Eventually, the steady stream of news about her case dwindled down to nothing.

  “I don’t think she turned up anywhere, but I haven’t been keeping tabs on it,” he says. “Why? What did you find?”

  “I was just interested.”

  “But why? What does a missing runner have to do with anything?”

  She shakes her empty pack again. She regrets dropping her last cigarette in the water instead of just pinching off the cherry. There were still two or three drags left that she could use right now. She’s tempted to tell Richard what she’s been reading about—the standing room only public safety forums after Lowell’s disappearance; the acts of vandalism at man camps telling oil workers to “go back to where you came from”; the random beatings of Black and brown men, two of whom required long-term hospitalization. Technically, the scapegoating fits into Richard’s theory that the boom turned Avery into a community of insiders and outsiders, but something about Leanne Lowell feels like her own private discovery. She doesn’t want to be told that she isn’t important or have to defend her right to include her in the story, not when she hasn’t even decided to yet.

  “I was looking through your file for tomorrow and started reading things in the Miscellaneous folder,” she says. “That’s all.”

  “What’s on the schedule besides Mueller and Bergum?”

  “Nothing, really. I just have a check-in with Lydia.”

  In the background, she hears him set down his drink too hard. The crystal knocks against the surface of the table; the ice cubes in his glass rattle and clink.

  “You’re talking to Lydia?”

  “Yes?” Her voice lifts cautiously, uncertain why his sounds so sharp all of a sudden.

  “Why are you talking to my editor?”

  She thinks the answer is obvious. She took over the article that Richard was writing. Now Lydia is her editor too. “Her assistant’s been emailing me. She said Lydia wanted to set up a call.” She pauses. “Is something wrong?”

  “No. I just thought—well, I thought you’d both have the courtesy to loop me in since I made the original connection, but I’m in meetings all day tomorrow, so I wouldn’t be able to join you anyway.”

  During the year they were together, Richard was a distinguished professor at the university. He was also a regular contributor to the Standard and researching a book on the housing market collapse of 2008. She never knew him to be in meetings all day. She can’t imagine his schedule is busier than it used to be when he was writing his book. She assumes he’s lying because his feelings are hurt and her impulse is to apologize, to invite him to join them, to offer to reschedule the call. But she’s trying to make this story her own now. It will never fully be hers until he backs away from it.

  “It’s late where you are,” she says, looking out the window. �
�Aren’t you tired?”

  She waits for him to say something, not certain if he’ll let the call with Lydia go, or if this is one of those things he’ll clamp onto like a dog, unable to shake it loose from his jaw. She imagines him on the other end of the line, boiling at her unintended slight. The silence continues, growing louder and more awkward with each second. In the parking lot below, two people are smoking in their car. She watches the tips of their cigarettes glow amber and black, amber and black.

  “Was I nice to you?” he asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was nice to you when we were together, right? I never made you do anything that you didn’t want to do?”

  At first, she assumes that she’s not hearing him correctly. It’s not like Richard to reflect on the past, which he argues is a useless activity. What’s passed is past, he always says.

  “Why are you asking?”

  “I’ve been thinking about us lately,” he says, pausing to swallow. “I don’t know why. I’m just feeling nostalgic, I guess.”

  11

  The bar down the street from her hotel is called Swift’s. The signs in the window advertise two-dollar Miller High Lifes and shots of Cuervo, Fireball, and Jägermeister. On the sidewalk, directly below the window, there’s an elaborately detailed mural of a football player carrying a ball, with huge bolts of lightning behind his feet as a substitute for the S’s in Swift’s. It’s not her kind of bar, she can already tell, but it’s close to the Thrifty—just a few doors down the block—and there’s a cigarette machine in the corner that she can see through the window. She paces back and forth over the mural, fighting two competing urges—to return to her noisy room so she can finish transcribing, or to buy some cigarettes and have a quick drink. Cars slowly pass through the intersection, their headlights filling her eyes with fluttering dots to match the butterflies in her stomach. She’s never felt nervous about walking into a bar by herself. This seems like reason enough to go in.

  The first thing she notices about Swift’s is that it smells like too many things. Cleaning chemicals, body odor, fryer grease, popcorn, and stale beer. Three steps over the threshold, and Elinor considers turning around and leaving—the smell is that bad. But a handful of people have already noticed her. It would be awkward to leave so soon after she arrived. It’s also not busy, which she likes. There are a couple of young guys playing pool in the back, and a couple of older ones watching TV. She buys a pack of cigarettes and slides into a seat at the bar.

  The bartender asks what she’s drinking. Elinor looks up and tries not to stare, but she can’t help herself. He’s a huge man in every way. Tall, fat, broad shouldered, beer-bellied. His mustache and beard remind her of a brown bear’s fur, so thick and full, with no hint of the pale pink skin underneath. She points at what the old man sitting on her right is having.

  “Same as him,” she says, ordering a boilermaker. She intended to have only one drink here. Technically, a beer and a shot are two.

  The old man seems amused by her order. He gives her a lopsided, red-faced grin that she refuses to return.

  “Eight bucks.” The bartender slides her drinks toward her from several feet away. “Unless you want to start a tab.”

  She downs the shot in a single gulp, trying not to grimace at the taste of the cheap well whiskey, which reminds her of lighter fluid. Her expression only seems to amuse her neighbor more. He has a laugh that sounds like a horn on a bike, goose-like and loud, designed to solicit people’s attention. She wraps her fingers around her beer, unwilling to give him the satisfaction.

  “Anything else?” The bartender seems impatient, as if it’s nearing last call, which it’s not.

  Her stomach rumbles. She didn’t bother picking up anything for dinner. Hungry now, she asks for some popcorn.

  “Huh?” he says loudly, following up with an even louder, “What’s that?”

  “Popcorn,” she repeats, looking around. “Don’t you have a machine in here?”

  The man with the boilermaker snorts. “She’s saying this place stinks, Mitch! Ha!”

  “We haven’t served popcorn in years.” The bartender frowns as he disappears into the back room.

  Her neighbor continues laughing. She turns and glares at him, annoyed that the bartender is annoyed with her for something she didn’t actually say. Why would you tell him that? she wants to ask, but she knows better than to engage with a drunk.

  “You don’t have to worry about Mitch,” the man says. “He’s big, so everyone always thinks he’s pissed about something, but he’s not. I’m Bud, by the way. Like the beer.” He grabs his fleshy stomach and gives it a jiggle. “But not as light.” He flashes her another grin, a bigger one this time, revealing teeth streaked brown like an old coffee filter.

  Mitch returns from the back room with a bag under his arm and a fake bamboo bowl that he places in front of Elinor. He tears open the bag and fills the bowl to the rim with peanuts in the shell.

  Bud looks on. “Hey. What about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “Well, how come she gets peanuts and I don’t?”

  “That should be obvious. Look at her and look at you.” Mitch stows the bag under the bar. “Besides, the last thing I need in here are girls getting shit-faced on empty stomachs.”

  Bud scowls. “Aw, fuck you, Mitch. Who wants your old sack of nuts anyway?” He gets up from his seat, announcing that he has to take a piss.

  Elinor cracks a peanut shell between her thumb and forefinger. It’s empty, as if the peanut inside shriveled up and disappeared. Every other one is the same. She doesn’t have a second bowl for the shells, so she starts a small pile next to her beer and waits for the bartender to come over now that she’s alone. It’s a relief when he doesn’t. She didn’t like the way he referred to her as a “girl” and assumed she couldn’t hold her liquor. It’s just one boilermaker, after all. She eats a couple of dusty-tasting peanuts while scanning the photos displayed behind the bar, action shots of men playing football. She looks up at the TV, expecting to see more of the same, but it’s summer and not the right season for it. Instead, there’s a rerun of a fishing tournament on, the 2012 Bassmaster Nationals, taped earlier that month according to the text floating on the screen. She didn’t know that such a competition existed, but here it is, right in front of her. Three men in a boat, a leaderboard scrolling across the bottom, slow-motion replays of someone reeling in a giant bigmouth bass. The other man sitting at the bar, the quiet one on her left, has his eyes glued to the TV, riveted.

  She watches along with him as she sips her beer. It’s warm already, almost undrinkable. She wants another whiskey, but it doesn’t seem right to order one when she still has a full beer in her hand. Richard used to criticize her when she drank too much, too quickly. She thinks about his question again—Was I nice to you?—not certain what he meant by “nice.” When was he ever nice?

  A month after they started seeing each other, he invited her to a gala dinner at the New York Public Library, their first big outing as a couple. She thought she looked good that night, but Richard didn’t care for the dress she was wearing, a strapless black evening gown that she’d found in the back of her closet, the only one she owned that was suitable for such a formal occasion. He said the fabric looked cheap, like something she’d picked up in Chinatown. And her hair and makeup—they were apparently wrong as well. Her hair was too flat, the makeup too pale. He griped about her appearance during the entire drive, muttering that he’d told people he was seeing a former model and who would believe him now? The two of them were sitting in the back of a cab, and she remembers the way the driver, an elderly Sikh man, kept looking at her in his rearview mirror. He wanted to know if she was alright.

  In retrospect, she should have asked him to pull over and just gotten out of the car, but she was struck by an uncomfortable memory. Her father used to tell her mother to change clothes all the time. Ed insisted on long sleeves over short, skirts instead of pants, hemli
nes below the knee, florals over stripes. Fashion trends and seasons were meaningless to him. He wanted Nami to look feminine and pretty like the other wives on the base, but buttoned up to avoid soliciting the attention of their husbands. Sometimes he’d even lay out the clothes he thought she should wear. If Nami tried to argue, he’d tell her he only had her best interests in mind. He didn’t want her to stand out for wearing the wrong thing; he didn’t want her to be embarrassed.

  In the back of the cab, Elinor fumed as she avoided the driver’s watchful eyes. She never imagined herself with someone who felt entitled to comment on her appearance. But before this thought had a chance to fully sink in, they arrived. Suddenly she and Richard were ascending the marble stairs on Fifth Avenue and walking through the library’s entrance, flanked by its huge stone lions. And then they were climbing even more stairs and entering the main reading room, surrounded by rose-colored frescoes and old wooden tables and more brass and gold leaf than she’d ever seen in one place. As soon as they joined the party, Richard became a different person. How charming he was. How much larger than life. Men in tuxedos and their bejeweled and perfumed wives crossed the room to say hello to him and introduce themselves to her. She met editors and writers, politicians and philanthropists—people who either made the news or wrote it. She watched as Richard asked about their children, their recent work, their elderly parents. She marveled at how he remembered their birthdays and anniversaries, the colleges that their sons and daughters attended. His public persona exuded such warmth and generosity, so much so that she allowed herself to forget the incident in the car and the pitying looks of the driver. She was grateful just to be in Richard’s orbit.

  Nice, she thinks, replaying the word over and over again, wondering why he suddenly cares, what he meant when he said he was feeling nostalgic. It couldn’t be nostalgia for the two of them as a couple, could it?

  Bud emerges from the bathroom, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Time to hit the road,” he says to no one in particular. When this fails to elicit a response, he raises his middle fingers at Mitch, shooting them off like guns, complete with sound effects. “Pew-pew.” Then he offers a wobbly salute goodbye that barely earns a lift of Mitch’s brow.