Last Train to Babylon

by Charlee Fam

  “We’ll see,” I say.

  “Okay. I love you.” She holds her breath, no doubt waiting for a response, even though I haven’t said it back in years. I hang up the phone and place it down on the edge of the sink. I try to push Rachel out of my mind, but I can feel my curiosity bubbling up. Did she really want to die? Did she leave a note?

  17

  I consider my own collection of suicide notes. I’ve compiled them over the years: five different drafts, which comes out to roughly one a year. I won’t get all pathetic about it. I promised myself a long time ago—well, five years ago—that I’d never be that girl. Five years, five finished suicide notes. Five also happens to be my favorite number—but that’s unrelated. And after five years of my crafting the perfect good-bye letter, Rachel is the one to go and do it. I guess it’s sort of funny, but that’s only if you care enough to analyze it, really mull it over, and I don’t have that kind of time.

  Sometimes, when I’m alone, I’ll write one out—a thoughtful and methodical process that requires my best handwriting, the kind saved for birthday cards and job applications. I write out the whole tired story—at least what I want people to take from it. Then, realizing I forgot some crucial detail or some subtle, accusatory remark, I crumple the paper into a ball, tear off a fresh page from my monogrammed stationery, and start over.

  I keep them all in a neat little folder, tucked away in my top desk drawer, just in case.

  I pull my hair out of its bun, run my fingers through, and stare at myself in the mirror. My hair is still damp and knotty from the gym, but I don’t feel like showering yet. I rub the soft side of my fist over a white spot on the glass. I should probably Windex; I can barely see my face through the murky streaks of toothpaste and hair spray. I make a mental note to pick up a bottle at Duane Reade this afternoon. I add it to the list: Windex, paper towels, toilet paper. It’s my job to restock the paper goods and cleaning supplies, and I always mean to do it, but sometimes I just forget; and it doesn’t cross my mind until I get a passive-aggressive Snap Chat from Danny of the empty roll while he’s taking a shit.

  18

  But now I remember to get to the store. And I realize it’s not exactly the time for shopping lists, considering I just found out my best friend—ex-best friend—is dead, but I can’t think of anything else I could be doing right now.

  I widen my eyes, lean in close, and blink three times, just to be sure. Nothing. I’m completely dry. I figured as much. I can’t even remember the last time I cried anyway.

  Typical. What a typical way for Rachel to go. I hold my thumb under the leaky faucet, letting the droplets catch in the corner of my fingernail and notice that the dark red nail polish has started to chip.

  I try to imagine her doing it, counting out the pills. She probably only took six or seven, just enough to make it seem legit, but not quite enough to kill her right away. That would be such a Rachel thing to do, too—threaten suicide, and then revel in the attention. Poor Rachel. Fragile Rachel. How can we all be there for Rachel?

  Too bad no one cared enough to stop her.

  My BlackBerry balances on the edge of the sink, and I can see the voice-mail alert still blinking up at me.

  Rachel had called late Friday, the night before she did it. I was out with college friends at some hipster bar in Williamsburg. I don’t do Brooklyn—I rarely leave the Upper East Side—so I was already in a pissy mood, and the thought of speaking to Rachel was an even bigger buzzkill. I didn’t answer. I haven’t since that day at the diner, but nobody knows about that. This was the only time she’d left a message. Now the tiny envelope on the screen taunts me: Do it. Do it, girl. Press me. Hold me to your ear. Let me tell you a secret.

  19

  My phone still teeters on the sink’s ceramic ledge, and I think about plugging the drain, turning on the faucet, and casually nudging it into a pool of hot water. I close my eyes and start to count to three, imagining the BlackBerry sinking, drowning the last remains of Rachel Burns.

  One. I breathe in through my nose.

  It’s not like I could have known she’d actually do it.

  Two.

  It’s not like I could have really done anything about it.

  Three.

  It’s not my problem anymore.

  I try to remember the name of the nail polish as the water rolls off my fingertips and pools above the drain.

  She’d always been weaker than me. She was bossy, definitely bossy. But she was weak. I know that for sure now.

  I rub my fist over the mirror again. It squeaks against the glass, which fogs up even more. I’m trying to ignore the throbbing pain on my left hipbone. My tattoo burns, like a fresh wound, beneath my gym pants, but I know the pain isn’t really there. I know it’s in my head. It’s all just in my head. So I focus on trying to wipe the streaks off the mirror instead.

  I think they call them phantom pains.

  We got them together, matching. Rachel had just turned eighteen, and I’d used my fake ID. I let her choose the design, but I’m sure I wouldn’t have had a say in it anyway. She called it a heartigram, but I never knew if that was the actual term or just something she made up on the spot. She was always doing that sort of thing, making shit up and then calling me out on not keeping up with her lingo: God, Aub. You’re such a dumb ass. Everyone knows what a heartigram is.

  20

  I can feel where she branded me. The letters R and A are tangled and twisted together into a black heart. It pulsates beneath my stretchy pants. It has to be in my head. I’ve thought about getting it removed. I hide it as best I can, but there have still been too many times, too many guys, and just enough skin for me to have to explain the meaning behind the mysterious heartigram etched into my left hipbone. This had been especially true in college—and early on, before Danny. I stopped explaining the heartigram, and it always played out the exact same way.

  It would start with a make-out session against the walls of some musty basement bar with a random frat boy on a Friday night. I was careful at this point. I’d had my fair share of hookups, but I was always in control. At last call, we’d fumble outside, usually into the sleet, snow, or rain; I’d have no clue where my friends went, but never really cared. I’d learned not to rely on people in these situations.

  So we’d hop in a cab—the guy would always be way drunker than me, drooling over my tits all the way back to the dorms—and we’d go back to my room, always my bed. Never his. My shirt would come off, and then he’d spy the sharp black ink peeking out from my unbuttoned jeans.

  Him: Cool tat.

  Me: Thanks.

  Him: What’s it mean?

  Me: Nothing.

  Him: Who’s R.A.? Hope it’s not another dude!

  And then thinking he was totally original, a real romancer in the sack, he’d prop himself up on his elbow, get all coy and smiley, lean in, and kiss me real slow.

  21

  They’d be gone before anything else could happen. I’d usually just fake a sudden bout of the spins, jump up, and run to the bathroom. I’d retch over the bowl, flush a few times to make it believable, and then politely ask them to leave. Worked every time.

  The ink has faded over the past five years, but I’m still reminded every time I go to the bathroom, every time I undress, every time I stand naked in front of a fucking mirror. And now Rachel is dead, and all I’m left with is a heartigram.

  I can’t decide if I’m jealous. No, “jealous” is not the word. But a part of me resents the fact that she beat me to it. Suicide is no longer an option for me. It would just come off as tacky and melodramatic. I can hear everyone back home now: She just couldn’t live with the guilt; maybe she couldn’t go on without her; I heard it was a pact.

  I’d rather not be eternally associated with Rachel if I can help it.

  I leave the bathroom and plop down on the couch to wait for Danny. I sit cross-legged and stare at my fingernails some more. It’s all I can do to stay in the moment.

 
; I’ve been seeing him for three years—a tall Irish boy from somewhere outside of Albany—and I have never mentioned Rachel to him, or what she did to me. I’ve never mentioned much before my college years—especially from those last few months before high school graduation.

  22

  I met Danny in college. We were both sophomores. I’d seen him around campus for a year or so, and thought nothing of him. He’d seemed kind of douche-y actually—a typical frat boy, always with a Mets hat, and he may or may not have been on the rugby team. He had one of those ubiquitous faces that could easily be mistaken for literally anyone else with a light brown buzz cut and a polo.

  We got together in the most anticlimactic, unromantic way possible. It was a frat party; he filled my red Solo cup with warm keg beer. We talked for maybe ten minutes about, well, warm keg beer, and he Facebook-messaged me the next day. That was back when I actually had Facebook. We were dating three weeks later. I had mono, and he was nice to me—that about sums up our entire relationship. He offered to give up his Friday night and came over with the first season of Lost and dining-hall frozen yogurt. So I felt like I sort of owed him my time, once I got healthy again and all. I never did get into Lost, though, which has always been the main issue in our relationship. Something he’s never really gotten over.

  “How can you feel nothing for these characters? For the island?” he’d ask, his voice prickly with pure distrust.

  That should have been his first clue.

  Two and a half weeks after my mono outbreak, I was back on my feet, drenching my spleen once again with copious amounts of vodka–Red Bulls. And then we had fun, Danny and me.

  We still have an easy relationship. He pays the rent—well, his parents do, at least while he’s finishing up law school—and we hardly ever fight. He’s nice enough; pretty good-looking, too. My only complaint is that he still insists on having sex with his socks on.

  23

  But in my top desk drawer, tucked away beneath my folder of suicide notes, are three carefully composed drafts of a breakup letter.

  I hear his keys fumbling in the door. I sit up straight and try to act natural. He walks in, balancing the tray of coffee on his forearm, and I’m still not sure if I’ll bother telling him about the call. But halfway through breakfast, I pull out the insides of my bagel and I tell him, without any sign of emotion, how she’s dead, how she probably killed herself.

  He stands up to hug me. “It’s fine,” I say, pressing my palms out in front of me. “We weren’t close.” He looks at me kind of funny and sits back down on the edge of the couch. “I don’t even think I’m going home for the funeral,” I say. “I don’t want to anyway. It’s just going to be miserable.” This wasn’t entirely true. I decided moments before that I’d at least go home for the week, if only to appease Karen and not look like a total asshole. I still wasn’t sure about the funeral. That part was true.

  “Do what you have to do,” he says. He cocks his eyebrow and bites down into his sesame-seed bagel.

  “What?” I put my own bagel on the coffee table and stare him down. He shrugs. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  24

  “Nothing,” he says. He’s doing that thing where he shakes his head and sort of smiles, but only because he doesn’t want to ruffle me up. But after a moment of silence, he at least attempts to say what he means, through a mouthful of bagel and cream cheese. It’s gross, and I want to tell him to keep his mouth shut when he chews, but instead I just wait for him to finish his thought. It’s always better to just get it over with. “I just think you should probably go, is all.” He won’t look me in the eye. Instead, he stares intently at the bagel in his hands and chews with unnecessary focus. “It’s the right thing to do.”

  The Right Thing.

  “Well, Karen basically said I’m a heartless bitch if I don’t go home; so I guess I don’t have a choice.” I take a sip of my coffee and wait for him to interject, to tell me it’s okay, that I could never be a heartless bitch even if I tried, that I always have a choice.

  But he doesn’t.

  “Your mom’s kind of right,” he says.

  I pinch the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger and close my eyes. I really can’t deal with this all right now. The girl is a corpse and she still somehow manages to fuck up my Sunday.

  I stare down at my half-eaten bagel.

  I think she’s cute.

  I don’t know, I guess. Cute, but kind of chubby.

  I wrap up the rest of my bagel and stuff it back into the paper bag with the rest of the trash.

  I can already imagine the sideshow that will be Rachel’s funeral: her mother, weeping over a white veneer casket; her little sister, Chloe—who’s got to be about sixteen now—chain-smoking in the parking lot; her stepfather, Jeff, leering at me from a shadowy corner.

  I can feel it all. The uncomfortable silence when I walk into the church; all eyes on me, the best friend, the one she left behind; and a cosmic cloud of nauseating smells: flowers, too much perfume, and incense, the Catholic kind.

  25

  Ms. Price, our second-grade teacher, she’ll be there for sure, and she’ll pull me into her bony arms and tell me what a lovely young woman I’ve turned out to be, what a shame it was that we hadn’t stayed close, how maybe then Rachel would still be alive. There would be hugs—a whole variety of them. Lingering embraces, one-arm-over-the-shoulder hugs, full-body hugs. I hate them all equally.

  Ally and the rest of the old Seaport gang will be there, too, huddling in a corner, holding each other in a disgusting sob fest, stopping only to snap perfectly posed Instagram shots to show off their coordinated outfits—#funeralchic. There’ll be Eric Robbins, clad in his marine uniform, the guests shaking his hand, thanking him for doing his part for this great country. Just the thought of it sends my stomach spinning and my throat tightens. I have to swallow just to keep from vomiting up my half-eaten bagel.

  There will be sympathetic nods. And there will be Adam.

  There will definitely be Adam, with his gray eyes and sloppy hair—his stupid face—always whining about something, always sulking.

  26

  I stand up and pick lint off my T-shirt. Danny pulls me into his chest. My face presses up against him at an awkward angle. My nose bends, I can’t really breathe, and my instinct is to pull away, but I try and let my body relax in his arms, even if it’s only for five seconds—which I think is my record. One. Two. He smells of cedar chips; he keeps his sweaters in an old chest at the foot of our bed. Three. Four. He releases me and I take a step back. My life with Danny is comfortable. It’s safe. It’s quiet. It allows me to go through the motions undetected, detached. And the idea of leaving it for a funeral on Long Island makes my guts ache.

  I hold out my hands. “It’s impossible to get a decent manicure around here. For twenty bucks, you’d think it would last more than a week.” Danny looks at me like I’m crazy. I glance at the chipped polish and remember the name: Wicked.

  27

  Chapter 3

  WHO PUT THE word “fun” in funeral? If you really think about it, funeral sounds like it should be synonymous with “carnival” or “funnel cake.” But I can’t think of anything fun about Rachel’s funeral, except for the fact that she won’t be there.

  I sit on the stone stoop of a walk-up, four buildings down from our own so Danny won’t see me. It’s nestled between two oversized brownstones, just a few feet from York Avenue. It’s humid, too hot for October, and my left temple throbs.

  I suck on a Parliament and rub two fingers into my temple. I allow myself one cigarette a day—usually in the mornings before work—just to take the edge off. But this is my second. Rachel is dead, so I’m having two today.

  28

  Danny doesn’t know I smoke, and I don’t consider myself a smoker. I’m not a smoker, at least that’s what I tell myself. I’m not a smoker, and I’m not a cheater. He thinks I only smoke when I’m stressed or drunk and says an actual s
moker would be a deal breaker for him. But with the way he’s been looking at me today, peeking over the top of his laptop, all squirrelly, I’m sure he wouldn’t have anything to say about it.

  It’s only been four hours since I got the call, but I can already see through his probing suggestions like plate glass: If you go home . . . When you decide if . . . If you’re feeling up to it . . .

  I wish he would just ask me. Just ask me. Are you going home for the funeral, Aubrey? I would like to know so I can plan accordingly. I think I’d have to respect that. But until he asks, I will purposely avoid giving him an answer.

  I do a lap around the block, slather my hands with Purell for thirty seconds, add a drop of lotion, spritz my hair with coconut-scented body spray, and pop a piece of spearmint gum. It’s a ritual, and it usually covers the lingering smell.

  Back at our apartment, I smell like a piña colada as I sift through some of my things, setting them on my bed one by one while Danny watches the Jets game. Underwear, a nearly empty bottle of Xanax, a couple of sweaters, not enough socks. Every commercial, I stick my head out the bedroom door to make sure he hasn’t gotten up to check on me. Deodorant, face wash. He hasn’t moved in an hour. I think he may have passed out. Toothbrush, yoga pants. I drag a sack of dirty laundry out from my closet—if anything, I’ll get some clean clothes out of this debacle. In one swift motion, I swipe the contents off my bed into the laundry bag.

  I e-mail my boss from my phone in the bathroom. I turn the shower on, letting the water drown out the sound of my fingers clicking the keys. The water sprays feverishly against the wall.

  29

  Hi Jonathan,

  I just wanted to let you know that there’s been a death in the family, and I have to return home for a few days. I’m sorry for the short notice. I will contact you midweek after the services to let you know when I will be returning to work.

  Weekly crime report is attached for edits.