by Leah Raeder
When she was gone I went down to the water and sat on the seawall, my legs dangling. I felt the pull of it, that promised erasure, the annihilating blot of the abyss. It’s strange living near the ocean. Living near this edge of eternity, this falloff into nothingness.
The truth was, if she fell in I’d jump after her, but not to save her. To drown myself at her side.
I was already drowning in dry air. Just dying to finish it.
Sometimes I’d sit on the dock and let the magnetic tug of the ocean draw at me till I lay flat on the planks, my body pressed as thin and small as it could go. Longing to be pulled under. To disappear.
You’re depressed, Vada, the psychiatrist would say. Take this pill and pretend it will fill the hollow where you used to be whole.
You fall in love with it a little. Depression. It’s an abusive romance. It hurts like hell but you don’t want it to stop, because at least hurt is a feeling. At least it reminds you you’re still alive.
It was a two-mile walk back, my lips chapped and the chill lodging bone-deep in my marrow, just like loneliness.
* * *
At work I slapped on a fake smile and poured espresso and steamed milk into cups. I didn’t see a single face, only the play of light on my own hands. The right looked normal unless you knew where to check for grafting scars. Ghost hands. The world they’d once shaped now passed straight through, nothing but a cold rush in my veins. My left was still clumsy. I hefted a coffee kettle with it, poured a whole mug before my wrist twisted, mug and kettle and a pastry platter crashing to the floor, all over my pants, my shoes, my life.
Which was how I ended up in my boss’s office, wishing I were invisible.
“It was my fault,” I said to the floor. I was very good at saying that when it didn’t matter.
Curtis rolled a joint and offered me the first hit.
“I’m on the clock.”
“Our little secret?” He exhaled. Sweet smoke clotted the air, the earthy perfume of forest animals and wild girls.
“I’m good.”
“We need to talk, Vada.” He was my age, college dropout. Around here, college didn’t mean much. Most jobs required a pair of sturdy hands. Unlike mine. “This is your third incident. I don’t ride your ass about it, but it’s starting to cost me.”
Funny thing was, I’d planned to ask for a paycheck advance. Month behind on rent. I’d promised Mrs. Mulhavey I’d have it today.
“I can work a double this weekend.”
“Weekend’s already scheduled.”
“Curt, look. My insurance doesn’t cover everything. I have to pay half this shit out of pocket.” No more pain meds. Couldn’t afford them. “I’m not asking for charity. I want to work. Is there anything you can do?”
Please don’t fucking make me beg.
He toked, held a lungful of smoke as he rolled his bloodshot blue eyes all over me. “I can give you some extra shifts.”
“Thank you,” I said dully, knowing what came next.
“We’ll keep you on register. No heavy lifting. Good work ethic’s worth more than a few broken dishes.” He shrugged. “You know, I’m off this weekend, too. We should hang out.”
There was no “should.” I’d do it, or find a new job.
We met at a bar a few months back. I’d asked the owner if she could train a new bartender and she said, You’re pretty, hon, but pretty don’t cut it. I need experience. Pretty got me a referral, though. Out in the alley I found Curtis sitting on a pier piling with a blunt. He was rawboned-skinny but wearing only a T-shirt and vest in winter. Typical Mainer. He whisked a joint through the night while he talked, a tiny meteor streak. Maybe he could use some extra coverage at his coffee shop. We could chat later. Meanwhile there was a party at Someplace in Somewheretown and we should go. I went, and my half-healed hand ached and I hadn’t fucked anyone since the night of the accident and I felt borderline subhuman, so I smoked Curt’s weed and gave him a handjob in his truck, mostly to see if I still could. I lasted two minutes before the pain turned my bones to ripsaws and shredded my skin from the inside. I finished him with my mouth.
I really needed that job.
It was a mistake. I know that. He still doesn’t.
“I’ll text you when I know my plans,” I said, and made for the door.
“Friday. After nine.”
“Wait for my text.”
“I’ll pick you up.”
I almost spun around and slugged him. You don’t whittle down a yes. A yes is something that’s built up, not conceded out of desperation, a hunk of raw meat tossed to a starving dog just so you can flee the moment.
But instead of saying no like I meant to, I carved a piece from my body and threw it to him. “I’ll go, but I can’t stay late. Finals are coming up.”
“It’s only April.”
“It’s grad school, Curt.”
“Art school.”
I turned. “What is that supposed to mean?”
If Elle were here, she would’ve flashed me the warning look. Temper, Vada. This is your boss.
“I mean, it’s not, like, med school.”
“It’s master’s-level work.”
“Didn’t they give you medical leave?”
I swallowed. My throat felt like a fuse, fire eating its way down. “I didn’t take it. I don’t need it.”
Straight lies. I was behind on everything, no hope of catching up. Yesterday I downloaded the forms for medical withdrawal.
“But you’re handicapped. Why not, you know, take advantage?”
My right hand shot out before I could stop myself. I grabbed the collar of his T-shirt and wrapped it in a fist, drawing his face close to mine. “Does this seem like a fucking handicap?”
Curtis gaped, expelling weed fumes. He was stunned enough not to notice how my hand shook. How weak my grip actually was. How tears collected in my eyes and threatened to paint my pain all over my face.
He pried me away. “Sorry. Poor choice of words.”
I muttered something pseudo-apologetic.
“It’s fine,” he said, looking elsewhere. “Go ahead. Take the rest of the day off.”
“I didn’t—”
“You’ll miss the bus.”
Dismissal.
The walk to the stop didn’t cool the hot spike drilling through the center of my chest. I missed the bus anyway. Of course. I sat on the hood of someone’s car and made a fist and smashed it on my thighs, but that wasn’t satisfying, so I hit the hood, too, which set off the car alarm, which was a little better. Tourists on the sidewalk stared.
I wanted to scream. Let everyone know how not okay I was. But all I did was side-eye the car as if it had thrown a tantrum on its own. Sometimes people actually feel relief when a machine breaks down—it’s not okay to show your not-okayness publicly anymore, everyone thinks you’ll shoot up a movie theater or a classroom, but when a machine malfunctions we can pretend to disapprove while secretly we’re cheering, living through it vicariously, willing it to spin and vibrate and explode, take out someone’s eye or hand, do something real. We want someone, something else to revolt, because we can’t.
What the fuck is wrong with me, Ellis? How am I supposed to make sense of anything without you?
The alarm finally died and the quiet pulsed as rawly as screamed-out air.
* * *
My landlady was waiting for me in the kitchen.
I stood on the porch, peering through the window. Sometimes you see disaster coming, the edge of the bridge rushing up, dark water waiting, and you’re so fucking empty and hopeless you don’t bother to avoid it. You don’t swing the wheel, slam the brake. You speed up. Meet your doom head-on.
I went in and sat at the table.
Mrs. Mulhavey smiled, not unkindly. Pushed a mug of hot cocoa over. I didn’t drink, but wrapped my hands around it. Heat merged with pain, muscle fibers pulling apart by millimeters, not pleasant but at least different from the ache I was used to. If I could choose my pain,
I’d prefer unraveling to exploding.
We faced each other. Regret tightened her smile.
“I don’t have the money,” I said in the same monotone I’d used with Curtis. “When do you need me out by?”
“Next week, dear.”
No argument. We’d already had that discussion. I was a good kid, Mrs. Mulhavey said, a good kid dealt a bad hand, no pun intended, but she had bills to pay and meds to buy, too. It didn’t move her that I was out of options. I didn’t have cash for the security deposit everyone else wanted. This was my end of the line, and fate took it away from me. Like I deserved.
I thought about getting up from the table and walking out the door and simply not stopping. Leaving all of this. My few run-down possessions, old sketchpads, canvases, paint cans unused for so long the lids were glued shut. A strand of Christmas lights bordering my bed and the photos taped above it. Me and Ellis, when we were happy. When we were us.
Mementos from someone else’s life.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I know, dear. I’m sorry, too.”
I looked at her lined face, wrinkles filling with afternoon shadow. The older we get, the more shadows we let in.
There was nothing left in me that shone. If I could still do a self-portrait, all I’d draw would be a silhouette.
Mrs. Mulhavey fetched something and set it before me. Tissue box. One firm pat on my shoulder, then she left me to sit in dignified silence, crying.
* * *
Friday night I got dolled up and let Curtis take me to a house on the ocean. We split a joint on the drive down the coast. Spruce towered to either side of the road, black bristles merging with black night, our headlights and a handful of silver dust scattered across the sky the only illumination. He drove past the bridge where Ryan’s Jeep had collided with Elle’s car, where the three of us crashed into each other’s lives and only two walked away and then those two walked away from each other. I felt nothing. Do you know how much blood is soaked into every mile of asphalt, how many graves you drive over each morning on the way to work?
This world is so thick with ghosts it’s a wonder anyone can breathe.
The house stood on a bluff over the water. Mixed crowd, some early twenties and rowdy and drunk, others older and chill, smoking weed or eating shrooms. Curtis walked around with me on his arm and introduced me as his girlfriend. I didn’t correct him. When people looked at us, they didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just a girl and a boy. Pink and blue. Skirt and slacks. Normal. They asked about my major, where I worked. They didn’t blink and say things like, Wait, are you two together? Are you a couple? Are you dot dot dot?
It felt so good, being seen for who I was, instead of what.
A girl kept catching my eye. Pixie-slim, dark brown skin contrasting sharply against an ivory dress. Her curly hair bounced with each step. No matter where we went she appeared after a few moments. A guy hovered at her side, lean and blond, wearing an open-throat Oxford.
“Know them?” Curt said.
“Nope.”
“I think they want to know you.”
He tried to introduce us but I ducked away, pretending I had to pee. And then I just . . . didn’t come back. I wandered through the house, through conversations, stopping to listen to someone discourse on a film or a book, laughing at their jokes, moving on before anyone asked me personal questions. For some reason I didn’t want that elegant couple seeing me with Curt. There was something about them, something honed, hard. Something too much like me.
Weed made me restless, hyperaware of the shift of light and shadow. I sketched scenes in my head: a woman and a man arguing, glimpsed through a window, their voices mute but their breath clouding in the chill, steam serpents circling, lashing. A girl in runny mascara sitting on the dock, her hair a dark tempest whirling around her face. A couple kissing in a doorway, her hands twisting his shirt as if crumpling a drawing. Human beings connecting in anger and longing and lust.
I felt queasy and I hadn’t even drunk anything. If loneliness has a physical manifestation, it’s nausea.
Where are you? Curtis texted.
I thought about meeting him at his car. Getting in and running a hand up his leg. Blowing him, but not letting him come. Going home with him and fucking him in his dank apartment that smelled of marijuana and coffee and then, in the afterglow, telling him how Mulhavey was tossing me on the street and how grateful I’d be if he spotted me some cash for a new place.
Never in my life had I traded sex for money. But was this really a life anymore?
meet me, I started typing, and the black girl in the white dress swept through the room. The blond guy strolled after her, pausing at my side. I’m tall like my mother. I had a couple of inches on him.
He smiled at me, a twinkle of mischief in it, a dare, then trailed in her wake.
I pocketed my phone and followed without hesitation.
This was what I’d been missing for so long:
Mystery.
The two of them waited in a sitting room. Instinctively, I closed the door after I entered. It was empty save for us. Low light, tinged sepia from a nicotine-stained lampshade. Sagging sofas and nicked wooden chairs, salt- and sun-bleached, that typical Maine look, as if everything was a found object washed ashore in a storm. The guy leaned against a wall, arms folded. The girl stood at the center of a hemp rug and gazed at me.
“Come here.”
Her voice was deep and commanding.
I’d been in bad situations plenty of times. These two didn’t set off my threat meter. She was clearly in control, and whatever she wanted, it was up to me to consent.
I went to her.
Sometimes people sing out to be drawn. She had the kind of face I could draw again and again without growing bored. Gazelle-like, large doe eyes, fine bones tapering to a neat mouth. Something haughty and proud in it. Queenly.
“How did you find me?” she said.
“Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
Alice in Wonderland, apparently.
“I’m just here with a friend. I don’t know who you are.”
The girl studied me, skeptical. “You’re not a client?”
“Client of what?”
The guy laughed. “Of who,” he amended. Tenor voice, soft and melodic.
“Who?” I echoed, confused.
The girl finally relaxed. Her smile was wry. “She’s clean.” She touched my face, traced my cheekbone, and I was so startled I didn’t move.
“Name?” the guy said, approaching.
I don’t know why I said it. I hadn’t planned to lie, but some instinct kicked in and said, Be someone else. “Morgan.”
The two of them exchanged a look, hearing the fakeness.
The guy circled me, not menacing, merely . . . appraising. Baby blues scanned my body without lingering or smoldering with want. The way you’d look at a horse, an animal you meant to buy and use.
I knew what my body did to men. This one wasn’t fazed.
“Age?” the girl said.
“Twenty-three. Today.”
She smiled brilliantly. “Happy birthday.”
First person besides Mamá to wish me a happy birthday, and it was a beautiful stranger about to pull me into some Eyes Wide Shut shit. How sad was that?
And how sad was it that I half hoped this might end up as some bizarre sex thing? Truth was, no one had made me come in months. Part of why I felt subhuman was the fact that I was young and horny and alone with my left hand every night. If Blondie here wanted to watch me fuck his smoking-hot girlfriend, I was down. And if she wanted to watch me bang him, fine. I’d even do them both. I wasn’t picky.
I just wanted to be touched. So badly.
“Morgan,” the girl said, “what do you do for a living?”
“Survive.”
“Want to make some money?” the guy said.
They wanted to fuck me. Kinky shit, BDSM or something. I was lonely, but maybe not tha
t lonely. They read the hesitation on my face.
“He’ll leave,” the girl said. “Just you and me. Five minutes of your time. Fully compensated.”
What could a girl do to me in five minutes?
Everything.
“Okay,” I said, surprising myself. There was a glimmer of knowing in her eyes. I didn’t think she’d hurt me, but also I didn’t much care if she did. Sometimes you get so sick of a familiar hurt you’d prefer anything else, even new pain, just for the sake of it being new.
The guy made a mocking bow and left the room.
“Take off your shirt,” the girl said.
“I don’t hook up till I get a name.”
The smooth mask of her face broke into a smile. “Call me Frankie.”
“Is that like ‘Call me Ishmael’?”
“Take off your shirt.”
Her voice hit my skin like a whip crack. I slipped my blouse off, trying not to laugh. God, Ellis. If only you could see this. If only you knew how pathetic I am without you.
Frankie’s eyes ran over me expressionlessly. I always felt more nervous under a girl’s eyes. We know each other too well, our gazes laser sharp, instantly zeroing in on flaws. I watched her take in the ink scrolling down my ribs and inside the low waist of my jeans. I avoided looking at the tats now, avoided my own body in mirrors. It had been so long since I’d let anyone look at me like this.
“Like what you see?” I said.
“Be silent until spoken to.”
I bit my bottom lip deliberately, and she laughed.
“You’ve got spirit. I like that.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Take your bra off. Seduce me while you do it.”
Voyeurism, then. All right.
I maintained eye contact and raised my hands to my breasts. Unbuttoned the front clasp, slowly. “Do you like watching, Frankie? You do. You like to watch.” The cups fell free and cool air grazed my skin and for the briefest moment I felt like myself. In control. The center of someone’s world. “Look at me. Do you want to touch?” I slipped the bra off, flung it aside. Lowered my voice. “Do you want to taste? Do you want to kiss me? On my mouth, my body? I’d let you put your lips all over me.”
