Suddenly Nick wondered what he was going to tell Lindsey. About his missing fingers. I did it for you, he could say. I wanted to prove that I hated myself as much as you hate me. I wanted to prove that I’m not what you need. And now that he’d done it, he would go back to her. He would track her down and explain everything. He would marry her! Hope rushed in. He wanted to celebrate.
“You got a cigarette?” Nick asked.
The man laughed. “Guess you’ll live after all,” he said. He patted his flat pocket. “Sorry, I quit.”
Nick carefully patted his own pockets, his jeans, and then his jacket, where he felt a surge of joy: his cigarette.
Thankfully, the man’s old car still had a cigarette lighter. Nick leaned over and pushed it into the dashboard, waited while it got hot. Then finally it was time. Nick lit his last cigarette. He inhaled. He felt the good energy rush through all of his joints, even as his stomach heaved. He shouldn’t be smoking, he knew. But the cigarette tasted so good. It was the last bit of his weekend. He’d be in the hospital soon, a great place to start getting sober. He’d have to get ready for Lindsey. It really was time. This cigarette would truly be his last, and so he was really going to savor it. Why deny himself this one last pleasure? Nick felt that he had been punished enough.
PART IV
TO US
2011
Haley—
This is Alice. (Had to get a new email.)
Bad news: I left Q, then the city, in quick succession. Am broke, both in wallet and spirit. Driving south now.
Which brings me to (or rather, will hopefully bring me to): Bethany Beach.
Does your mom still have that condo? And can I stay there?
Just a couple days. I need somewhere Q won’t find me.
Don’t say no,
Alice
Haley—
Made it to the condo last night, late. The smell of chlorine in the lobby familiar as a favorite old T-shirt.
Front desk gave me the key, no problem (thank you for calling).
Condo itself: Total time warp. Nothing changed since my last visit (that summer trip after college, I think). I swear not a single doily has moved.
Couldn’t sleep. Stayed up and counted all the rabbits. If you want to finally know: 187 total (counting figurines and decorative plates but not the bathroom wallpaper).
I’m not making fun. You know I love this place. And am so, so grateful. For your generosity; also for your mom’s beach stockpile of frozen dinners, mystery novels, and lite beer. Been here barely twenty-four hours and already devoured a couple of each.
Spent most of today drinking and thinking about Q. Brought a cooler of beer down to the ocean—wanted to watch the waves and replay our relationship from the beginning. Wanted to pinpoint the moment I started lying to myself about him. Took me three beers to get through our first date.
Now I’m sitting on the balcony, late afternoon, hunched over the glow of this phone. Typing is exhausting. My finger muscles all out of shape. But writing is therapeutic. And your email was the brightest spot in my day.
To answer your question: The car is Q’s. I grabbed his keys and phone on my way out the door. Middle of a big fight. He was in the kitchen. Banging open drawers. I got out before he could find whatever it was he was looking for.
Don’t worry, I checked already, the phone is not set to track its location (Q’s paranoid about data). I’m sure he’s reported the car stolen, but it’s safe in the condo garage, and I’m safe here, for now, on my own two feet.
Am fully aware that I sound melodramatic. Forgive me and I’ll tell you everything sometime,
Over a Lean Cuisine,
Alice
Haley—
Do you know that you are the best? The. Best. I am so deeply grateful for the LOAN, and I will pay you back, please don’t argue.
But thing is, an internet transfer’s no good.
Q has changed all my passwords. (Hence the new email address.) I’m locked out of all my bank accounts. Embarrassed to say that the only thing good to me right now is cash. This kills me to ask, but . . . can you send a money order, USPS?
Or don’t. Seriously, I’ll be fine. Your friendship is the most important thing. Please never stop writing. I need the distraction. Q has been calling. Ringer is off, but every time I look at the screen there are twelve missed calls, all from the same number.
Can’t imagine his logic. What does he think is gonna happen? That I’ll answer? That he’ll say something that will make me forgive it all?
The scarier thought: He can’t stand me ignoring him. He’ll do anything to get me to respond. He hasn’t thought beyond that point.
Exhausting to think about a life on the run from a man with no concept of cause and effect. A life spent like this,
In hiding,
Alice
Haley—
Peace at last. I switched the phone to airplane mode. Q can call all he wants.
Of course, that means I also can’t actually send this email you. But it’s nice writing to you, anyway, even if I’m
Just pretending,
Alice
Haley—
Can’t sleep. Can’t shake the feeling that Q is coming for me, tonight.
Don’t want to take the phone off of airplane mode. I’d rather not know. I’m going to keep writing these email drafts to you, to distract myself. Maybe I’ll send them later.
You’d say I’m being crazy.
But you don’t even know the half of what happened.
Met him at your twenty-fifth birthday party. Jake Rack’s, that beer garden in Fort Greene. Was there with Andy, the musician. Met him online. Probably you don’t remember Andy. Super boring guy.
Do you know how stressful that year was for me? Hope not. Spent so much time trying to hide it from you. Because we’d drifted apart before. My ninth-grade transfer to private school. After our inseparable middle school years, you grew into a track star and salutatorian, and I became the bad girl on antidepressants and remedial math, the girl who smoked in the bathroom as much as others but got caught twice as often. But let’s not talk about those bad old years. Thank God we found our way back to each other the summer before college. We swore we’d never drift apart again.
But then, our twenties: we moved to New York together, and you took to it like a fish in water. With your short film at Sundance and your part-time job at Tribeca. Going to parties where you hung out with famous actors. Working on your first feature documentary (an experimental film about rape culture). Dating the guitarist of an up-and-coming band. Me, desperate to keep up, dreaming of writing a horror novel, scrambling into my first gig writing movie reviews, desperate to be fancy enough to be your friend.
Worked temp jobs to pay the bills. Pitched pop culture think pieces to Rolling Stone online for pennies an hour. Raised my profile, or tried to. Mostly just raised hate mail, marching steadily into my inbox like zombies. Lots of angry paragraphs about my body (too big) and my intelligence (too small). Once, I suggested an all-female remake of They Live; someone sent me a sketch of myself hanging upside down in a slaughterhouse between two dead pigs. It was incredibly realistic. They must have spent hours on it.
I wasn’t really sleeping. Got angry easily. Was desperate for comfort. Met Andy online. Oh, Andy: incredibly boring, incredibly reliable. Always showed up five minutes early for our dates. Never initiated sex, always waited for me. (Which I liked at first; at that point I’d only really been with one other man, and he was just as cautious.) Andy slept on his back, snored softly, didn’t move all night. Played piano in a hotel lobby. I sort of hated him. Kept sleeping with him because I didn’t like being alone at night. I did like the way he smelled. And the way he never asked for anything. But I stayed on the lookout for someone fancy. Someone to help me impress you.
Als
o had Khloé. My one true love! Remember how Jordan Owen was always sending around photos of foster cats? Khloé came into my inbox on the same day as the slaughterhouse sketch. Read her story and cried. Seven years old and fat. Didn’t stand a chance against the adorable kittens at the shelter. Came from a single mother and her two daughters in Jersey City. The mother’s new boyfriend didn’t like cats. I wrote back mine mine mine before I had any time to think about litter boxes or vet bills or the fact that cats weren’t allowed in my apartment. Smuggled her up the stairwell in a backpack. She followed me around the apartment like a dog. I loved loved loved sweet Khloé.
So in summary, my life: Sleeping with a boring man just to be protected from imaginary intruders at night. Doting on a fat old cat. Reading hordes of hate mail. Going to parties where your sophisticated friends fawned over you, and you graciously tried to keep me in the conversation, and I frantically tried to hold up my end of the bargain: making jokes and opinions on the news and anecdotes from my polished life story of suburban rebellion. Q stepped into this tableau like the end of a romantic comedy, offering not just protection but confidence and warmth and compliments, everything a girl is raised to want.
Funny thing: back then, I felt happy for the single mother who had to give up Khloé. Good for you, I thought. Go after the love you deserve. Don’t let a cat get in your way. Now feeling the opposite. Worried about how things turned out. How many more concessions did that boyfriend demand.
Remember the trash-can fires at Jake Rack’s in the spring? When it was not quite warm enough yet to be outside. That night I was trying to impress some fancy friends of yours. Andy was off at the bar. With his hand half-raised, meek, trying to get the bartender’s eye. I was complaining about how gentrifying Brooklyn fetishized old tropes about the so-called inner city. Fucking trash-can fires, I said, the prop a movie in the eighties would use to signify a gritty neighborhood. With a flourish, I pointed to the fire by the door. And then Q walked in. So that it looked like I was pointing at Q.
Q raised his eyebrows in surprise. I realized what had happened. Embarrassment made my heart lurch sideways. But he told me later it was a thing he’d dreamed about happening his entire life: walking into a room and the most beautiful girl in it would point immediately right at him: That one. That’s the one I want.
I dropped my finger. Q looked over his shoulder, saw nobody behind him. Pointed at his own chest, mouthed, Me? Had an expressive, open face, with big features that don’t seem handsome at first, then you find you can’t look away. Like an actor. Had on a red plaid shirt and blond hair long enough to tuck behind his ears, like the grunge rockers I loved when I first hit puberty. I shook my head, No! Sorry! but he kept looking, shaking his head in surprise, silently saying, Me? Me?
Went over to apologize. Said hi to him and his friend, the friend—a good wingman—already walking away, giving us space, like he didn’t even know who Q was. I turned to Q. I didn’t mean to be rude, I was just talking about this— He interrupted me. I liked it, he said. And as a matter of fact I was just about to point at you.
Sick of Andy. Met him on a website where people look for dates. By definition, we wanted something from each other. Yet he would never admit that he wanted me. Would invent excuses to invite me up to his apartment. The first time he kissed me, went in for it by saying, I think there’s something in your eye. Then I was standing beside a trash-can fire and Q was holding eye contact, and Andy was trying and failing to get the bartender’s attention, and Q said, Let me buy you a drink.
One rare consistent pleasure of my life in those days: handing out my business card. Had never had a business card before. Had made up business cards playing office as a small child; nothing to me said grown-up like a business card. After weeks of worry about the cost, had gone online and been thrilled to discover that you could print business cards for the cost of two beers at Jake Rack’s. Ordered five hundred, paid an extra ten dollars to have the ink embossed.
No, told Q. I’m here with someone. But, I said, handing him my card: Here’s my card. Call me later. Took the card from me. Smiled, reading it. Ran his thumb over the embossed ink of my name.
Texted me half an hour later. Thanks for the card, now you have my number, too. Then, a second later: You have a beautiful laugh. I had just been laughing. The people I was talking to were still laughing. I stepped back slightly, set my beer on a nearby table, looked around. Spotted Q at the bar, typing into his phone. Looked up and saw me and smiled. My phone chimed at the same time: Don’t let me distract you. He watched me, slightly smiling. Tried to decide what to write back, settled on: I work on the internet, ignoring distractions all day long, u couldn’t distract me if you tried. Wrote a smiley face, deleted it, then hit Send.
My writing lived on the internet. The more I responded to people responding to my writing, the more people responded to my writing. So it was not strange that night for me to spend so much time on my phone. Dipping away from the party to react to my screen. But this was different. The most intimate text message conversation I’ve ever had. The kind of deep conversation that feels like the first of many, and also like it will never be enough. Strange how romantic I make it seem. Now, considering everything. But it was.
Shared a cab home with Andy. Told him I had a headache. Told the cabdriver two stops. Okay, the driver said. Okay, Andy said, with the same level of emotion. Last time I ever spoke to him. He finally got out. I settled into the back of the dark cab. Twenty more blocks to go. I kept texting Q, listening to the murmur of the cabdriver’s ongoing phone conversation. Khloé came to the door purring. I met someone, I told her, sweeping her up in my arms. Meow, she said, supportive as usual.
We met for coffee the next afternoon. Magic. One of those days that flies by. Interrupting each other. Too many new topics. Not enough time in the world for everything you want to say. Sat through two cappuccinos, charmed him with everything I had. He held my hand, stroked his thumb casually along my wrist.
Coffee flowed into dinner. Then drinks at his apartment. A sleek building in Williamsburg, looked hermetically sealed. Evening light sliding along the glass exterior. Inside, an elevator lined with mirrors. Little black eye of a security camera right over the buttons. Smell like an expensive shoe store. Parking spot included. Had never known anyone who lived in that kind of building. Not even Andy, who was in finance, had a place like that. Wondered where Q got the money. As a PhD student. In philosophy. A trust fund, I thought, and I’m embarrassed to say it sweetened the deal.
His apartment was warmer than the building. Big windows. Framed landscape photographs in black-and-white on the walls. Fridge covered with wedding invitations from friends. There was a beautiful gray wool blanket flung over the couch. We wrapped ourselves in it naked and stayed like that until late Sunday afternoon.
Looking back, were there warning signs? Maybe there were. Getting the water pitcher from the fridge on that first night, stopping to look at all of the save the dates. Was impressed by how many. There was a gay couple in their fifties, their postcard written in French. A white man and a black woman who had gotten engaged while rock climbing. Another couple who couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds combined, who had styled their invitation like a boxing match. Eve and Michael.
Most of the save the dates were for weddings in the past. But Eve and Michael, the boxers, theirs was close, just two months away. I immediately started dreaming of Q taking me with him. As the weeks passed, I thought about it a lot. It became the way I measured our relationship: When will he like me enough to invite me to that wedding? I worried he already had a date. Didn’t want to know. Couldn’t ask.
The week leading up to Eve and Michael’s wedding, I was a wreck. I mangled one review so badly the editors wouldn’t run it, my first postcommission rejection. Went to Q’s on Saturday to make ravioli. Packed my gym bag with an appropriately nice dress and shoes just in case, feeling like a lunatic. I finally asked him a
t three o’clock when he was still wearing a T-shirt with holes in it. Are you not going to Eve and Michael’s wedding? It’s today. He looked at me. Like, What wedding. I pointed at the fridge. Oh, he said, We’re not really that good of friends. No? I said. You get a lot of invitations to not that good of friends’ weddings? I started laughing. Relief flooded through me like a stiff drink. Laughing hysterically. I didn’t ask why he put it on the fridge, then. Too relieved to worry about it anymore. Never worried again.
Only realized later that Q had stolen the save the dates on his fridge. The mailboxes weren’t locked in that building. Did he steal them to impress me? He was an only child, his parents were dead, I never met another member of his family. I met only a few friends for dinner, and rarely more than twice. In the three years we spent together I never saw another save the date appear on his fridge, and we never went to a wedding together, not once.
Getting ahead of myself, though. The wedding story is eight weeks in. Our first week was a whole story in and of itself.
Got home to Khloé on Sunday (she was curled up by the door waiting for me). Spent six days not texting Q on purpose. Careful discipline. Delicious torture. The feeling was so good. To have met someone and spent the weekend together. To only want more of each other. Those feelings don’t last. I wanted a few more days of that. Was twenty-five and had felt that first blush of love a few times before. Was halfway ready to stay with Q forever. Which meant this was the last first week of love in my life, and I wanted to savor it.
That week, while not texting Q, went to see a psychic. Had been planning to go for a while. The Psychic Love Spiritual Advice Counselor, a narrow purple awning and the words Read the Signs in blue neon. I’d always wanted to go. Problem was, could never get a handle on the hours. Jogged by at seven in the morning, the neon sign would be on, but at eight, showered and dressed and with a spare half hour before work, it was off again. Weaving by, too drunk, at eleven thirty on a Friday night, the sign was on, but when I went back at the same time the following night, it was off again. The Wednesday night after I met Q, walking home from work, it clicked on just as I walked under it. Read the Signs, it told me.
True Story Page 13
