Multiple Listings

by Tracy McMillan

  Except me.

  Very quietly, I say: “It feels like this.”

  “I love you, Nicki.”

  He leans over and kisses me. Then he squeezes me and pulls me close, right on top of him. As I’m lying there, I can feel him starting to want me. His hands drop down to my ass, which he touches exactly the way I like. “I’m really turned on all of a sudden,” he says, laughing.

  We lie there and just look at each other. He gazes at me with his dark brown eyes like no one has ever gazed at me before. Like I’m everything.

  There’s nothing like the feeling when Jake focuses all his love on me like this. It’s the same feeling as trying on a dress in a particularly good dressing room, where the lights are warm and bright and the mirror is slanted at an angle that makes you look especially skinny. In this particular light, in this particular mirror, you can see yourself not just wearing the dress, you see where you’re going to wear it, and all the people you’re going to be with, you see the glass of wine you’re going to be holding, you see yourself drinking it. You’re in Napa somewhere, or Malibu, or Italy, one of those places where people drink wine wearing dresses like this one.

  And you want that life, you know it’s meant for you, you want it so much the next thing you know you’re opening your wallet and handing over your card and the girl behind the counter is asking, “Debit or credit?” And it takes you a second to realize, you’re not really sure. All you know is: you want that dress. And you’re willing to do what it takes to get it. No matter what it costs.

  “I love you, too.”

  Now that I think back on this, I realize that I did have a sense that Jake might not be able to live up to the big experience he was trying to have with me. I couldn’t have named it at the time, but it was there, right at the very beginning.

  “Get to the point,” Peaches says, impatient. “What in God’s name did he have to say?”

  “Well, he said there’s an explanation,” I say, coming back into the moment. “So you were right.”

  “Okay, I’m worried again.” She scowls. Her face is like an EKG, going up and down according to whether she thinks what I’m saying is leading me toward Jake, or away. She really doesn’t want me to be with him. But like I said, she always feels like that about my boyfriends.

  “No, wait,” I say. “I hung up on him.”

  “Really?” The little needle on the EKG shoots up. Peaches is all excited. “That’s my girl. You hung up on him? Did you tell him you were going to hang up on him, or did you just do it? Or did you do that thing where you pretend it’s a cell phone problem and you’re losing them, You’re cutting out! and then, boom! They’re gone as fuck.”

  I laugh. “I hung up on him without saying a word. I just got really sleepy all of a sudden, and didn’t want to hear another word from him, so I just clicked the button and he was gone. Like that.” I’m actually feeling pretty proud of myself. “And it wasn’t that hard.”

  “And he didn’t call back.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Amazing,” she says. Then she goes somewhere surprising. “This is because your dad’s here,” she says. “He’s changing you. I swear. You’re not acting as stupid over men as you used to.”

  “You can stop now,” I say, just as my phone rings. It’s Miguel calling, probably with something about the restaurant. “I have to take this. Go ahead. I’ll be right in.”

  “You know he’s coming back,” Peaches says. “You know that, right? You haven’t seen the last of him.”

  “You mean Jake?”

  “No, I mean Santa.”

  I wave Peaches away and answer the phone. I can’t handle her theories about Jake, or my dad. I have to answer this call, because I still have a restaurant I need to deal with.

  18

  * * *

  RONNIE

  Melissa sits across from me drinking tea at a little place not too far from the halfway house. This is the first time I’ve seen her since I moved into her apartment, then out of it, on the same day. At first I thought things might be tense, but she seems friendly, and my first check-in at the halfway house went off without a hitch. After I peed into a cup and filled out the paperwork, we started chatting, and next thing I know I’m sitting here staring at her mouth as she talks about her life—I don’t know, to be honest, I’m not really paying attention.

  I’ll say this: she’s looking good.

  “What did you do with your hair,” I say. “It’s nice. I like it.”

  She blushes. “Really? Just some highlights. Nothing major,” she says. I’m not sure if she knows it or not, but she’s gazing at me, and it’s making me want to have sex with her. “How are things with your daughter?”

  “You know what? Surprisingly good. She was a little edgy for the first week or so, but I have to hand it to her, she’s been really accepting.”

  “Of course she has,” Melissa says. She’s eating a berry scone, and instead of lifting the whole damn scone up to her mouth and biting some off, she’s tearing little pieces off and placing them in her mouth. It’s turning me on. “You’re a good person, Ronnie.”

  “You don’t realize. I didn’t tell you this at the time, but before I showed up at her place, she hadn’t spoken to me in years,” I say. “I thought she might never speak to me again.”

  “Well, then she’s a good person, too,” Melissa says, popping another little morsel into her mouth. I see her tongue this time and I—

  I lean over the table and kiss her. She kisses me back. And the moment I do it, I can’t believe I did it.

  Again.

  * * *

  I’ve got Melissa by the hand and I’m leading her down the narrow hall of her apartment. I open the first door I come to. It’s the linen closet. “Shit.”

  “Next one,” she says, giggling. She opens the next door and there’s the bed. “Sit down,” she says.

  I sit on the bed and she stays standing, pulling her phone out of her purse. (Does anyone ever put those things away? Even when you’re about to get laid?) She touches it a few times, different screens start popping up like it’s a video game. I’m fascinated by the fact that all of life seems to be contained in these phones. A few more swipes and taps and she sticks it into a little clock radio thing by the bed. Music starts playing.

  Sade.

  “That’s good,” I say.

  “I know, right?” Melissa smiles. “I love this song,” she says.

  She starts swaying to the music, totally in her body. A woman’s body—every last woman, in every last body, is beautiful. If only they knew that.

  “You’re so pretty, Melissa.”

  “Me?” she says incredulously. “I am hardly pretty.”

  “You are. You just don’t know it.” I drop to my knees and face her, wrapping my arms around her legs, and bring her toward me until her knees are at my shoulders. I smooth my palms down her back, feeling the channel of her spine and the strong muscles on either side. She’s being felt. Like if hands were eyes, she’s being seen. “Look at you. You’re amazing.”

  She almost makes a sound but stifles it. I run my hands over the lower part of her back, with the ten extra pounds that stand in the way of her loving herself . . . and I meditate on loving her there. Right there, where she can’t love herself. As I move to that spot where the sounds begin to come out of her, she can’t even hold it anymore—

  “Oh my God,” she says. “Ronnie.”

  I lower her to the bed and we look at each other a long, long beat, and then she lays herself back and I lie down on top of her and then we’re just together with the intensity that only happens when there’s no possible way the relationship will ever work.

  * * *

  That was a week ago. Now I keep sending Melissa to voice mail. I know she probably feels abandoned. But I just can’t seem to pick up the phone. Sleeping wit
h her again was a mistake that I don’t want to repeat. And since I don’t seem to have any control over it, the only way to make sure I don’t repeat it is to just go cold turkey: don’t speak to her at all. I have a month until I have to check in at the halfway house again, and by that time, I’ll probably be fine. I hope I will.

  There’s something about living with Cody and Nicki that’s getting me in touch with a more wholesome, more pure side of myself. I’d say it’s a side of me I forgot—but I don’t know that I ever had it. When you’re locked up repeatedly for as long as I have been, and treated like a criminal for as long as I have been, you start to believe what the world is saying about you. You start acting the way they expect you to act. You lose your humanity.

  There’s a saying I read somewhere: Use things, not people. I never forgot it. Probably because I spent my life using people, not things. I don’t want to use Melissa, or anyone else. That’s new for me. Is it possible that making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day for a high school junior could take away my lifelong willingness to exploit people? And if so, now what am I going to do? Exploiting people is what I’m best at.

  I’m only half joking.

  Part of me is afraid that the Melissas of the world are just the gateway drug to going back to my old self. I’ve never been a 100 percent good person. I’ve been a person who’s good “inside.” Who could be truly good if I would only stop doing bullshit. Maybe I’m not doing bullshit today. But when you have a track record like mine, is it possible to just never do bullshit again? Could I dare to believe I could put all that behind me once and for all? I can’t afford to slip back into my old state of mind, my old habits. My new life is too good, and for the first time ever, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep it. Even give up free sex. (Damn, that is willing.)

  Melissa isn’t making sainthood easy, either. Her messages have gone from friendly to worried to judgmental to martyr and I still haven’t called her back. Yes, I feel guilty about just letting her hang there without an explanation. She probably thinks I’m rejecting her personally—women always have to go there. In her last message, she even tried to suggest that maybe she might make things difficult for me with my parole. She’d never really do that, but it’s proof of how much pain she’s in, and I feel terrible. The least I can do is write her an email telling her what’s going on with me. She’ll understand.

  I’m sitting in my room, on the computer—those Gmail people deserve every billion they’ve got for making the Internet and email understandable to a lifetime convict like me—when Cody comes in, white as a sheet.

  “I think I need to go to the hospital,” he says.

  He holds up his hand and there’s a massive gash in his left thumb; I can practically see the bone. He’s bleeding buckets of red blood all down his shirt and onto the floor.

  “Ohmygod, boy!” I jump to my feet. “We have to call an ambulance! I need to get a towel! We should call your mom! Did you call your mom? Shit.”

  Cody’s calm as anything. “I can’t. My hand.”

  “We have to call the operator!” I grab my cell phone. “What’s that number you call again?”

  “You mean 911?”

  “Right,” I say, and start dialing.

  “Who’s the operator?” Cody’s breathing isn’t even heavy. Which means he’s probably in shock.

  They pick up in one ring: “911, what’s your emergency?” I tell them our address and that Cody has nearly sliced his thumb off. While I talk, I’m frantically looking around for something to stop the blood from going everywhere.

  “Here!” The only thing within reach is a pillowcase, so I pull it off and start wrapping, trying not to hurt Cody as I go around and around his hand. “How did this happen?”

  “I was cutting a bagel,” he says. “And I slipped.”

  I can hear myself shouting at the 911 operator. “He was cutting a bagel. And, uh, I don’t—we don’t—have a car. Hurry!” I hang up and run immediately to the bathroom. “Let me get something else for that blood. Hold on, son. They’ll be here right away.”

  I grab four more towels from the hall closet and go back to Cody, who is calmly sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning over carefully so he doesn’t spill blood on the bedspread. He’s such a great kid. He fronts like he’s a rebel, but he’s really a very considerate boy.

  “We got to call your mom,” I say. I grab my phone, push every button at once, trying to get to my main page, then to my list of recent calls, then to scroll down to Nicki’s name. I keep ending up on the wrong page, the wrong list, the wrong name. “Goddammit!”

  Cody starts laughing.

  “Don’t you laugh at me!” I realize this must look pretty funny to him, and he’s the one with his finger half cut off, so if he can laugh, then so can I.

  “You look so—” He can’t even finish the sentence because he’s giggling so hard. “You’re all—” He mimics me fumbling with my phone. “Sorry, dude.”

  I can hear the sirens screaming down the block. “They’re almost here. Where’s your shoes, and I’ll get you a jacket. And is there an insurance card around here? You need your wallet for your ID.”

  “Go in my room,” he says. “It’s in there.”

  I charge into Cody’s room and grab a jacket and the nearest pair of shoes. By this time, the ambulance has pulled up and I run out to the living room to open the door. “He’s just about cut it off,” I say. I feel crazy, but I sound okay. “I’m his granddad.”

  “Let’s take a look at that,” the paramedic says. He steps over to Cody and unwraps the towel. There’s blood everywhere. Cody winces for the first time. I think the shock might be wearing off, or maybe it’s just hitting him that he’s got a damn awful wound.

  “Okay, let’s go,” the paramedic says. He helps Cody stand and stays with him as they move through the house. “This way. We’ll get you something for the pain.”

  I grab my phone as we walk out the door. I sure hope I can figure out how to dial Nicki’s number.

  * * *

  We’re in the back of the ambulance. Cody’s lying down on a stretcher, and I’m sitting on a little stool across from one of the paramedics. The ambulance pulls down the street, lights flashing. I notice a couple of neighbors poking their heads out of their front doors as we go by.

  “Dude, it’s pretty chill in here,” Cody says, looking around. He points at something hanging on the wall. “What is this thing?”

  The paramedic, a young guy who looks like maybe he flunked out of firefighter school, gives Cody a tablet of some kind of painkiller. The boy happily downs it. “Should start working in a few minutes.”

  “Awesome,” says Cody.

  “Should we make some conversation?” I ask. For some reason, it seems like the thing to do is to try to take Cody’s mind off what’s happening. I land on asking him about Magic, since I don’t know a single thing about the game, and it’s literally the only subject Cody will speak about before being spoken to. “Tell me something about Magic, the—”

  “Gathering?” he says.

  “Yeah. I really want to know more about your game,” I say. “For example, is it something I should be learning to play?”

  Cody smiles. As if the thought of seeing me playing his game would be very absurd. “I think it’s probably a little complicated for you.”

  “Oh, do you now?” I come back with some very exaggerated game face. “Because you know I could throw down on some chess in my day. In prison, we got nothing to do but play games. So you should know who you’d be dealing with.”

  The mention of prison gets a raised eyebrow from the paramedic. But not Cody, who loves it when I tell stories about prison. He can also see that it’s probably true that I had as many hours to hone my game as he’s had to hone his.

  “There’s so much to talk about, it’s hard to know where to start,” he says. “Basi
cally, you put together a deck of sixty cards, from the ten thousand cards that have been invented for the game.”

  “Ten thousand? Are you kidding me?”

  “The cards all have names, and they do things. Things that are too complicated to go into in an ambulance.”

  I smile. I love this boy’s sense of humor.

  “Another part is that there are five colors: white, black, blue, red, and green. Which we abbreviate to be WUBRG. Pronounced woo-berg.” On cue, both the paramedic and myself say woo-berg under our breath. It’s one of those words you really need to feel in your mouth.

  Cody keeps going. “Each color has a different vibe. Like, white is the color of healing and light and peace and righteousness. You know, white creatures have First Strike and Lifelink.”

  “What’s Lifelink?”

  “Again, too complicated,” Cody says with finality. He’s very clear on the level of game he’s willing to teach me. Level one, basically.

  He continues. “Blue is intellect and knowledge; black is power and greed and death; red is passion and creativity; and green is nature and reality. Oh, and there’s all this overlap with poker. So much that I sort of think one day I might decide to take all my MTG knowledge and parlay it into a sick poker career.”

  “Poker! Now that’s my game,” I say.

  The paramedic cuts in. “We’re here,” he says. He looks at me. “After we pull in, you go to the intake and we’ll bring him to a room.”

  The back doors open and there’s a rush of energy as they take Cody and wheel him into the emergency room. I dial Nicki’s number again and brace myself for her arrival.

  19

  * * *

  NICKI

  It takes me half an hour to get to the hospital, that’s how bad traffic is on 84 East. Lesson learned: don’t ever have to go to the emergency room at rush hour. I know Cody’s injury isn’t life-threatening, but Ronnie made it sound really bad, and the whole way I’m having morbid fantasies of staph infections and MRSA and other calamities you hear about but never think could happen to you until you’re on your way to the hospital. By the time I get there, Cody has already been given a spot behind a sliding curtain. I pull it back, half afraid of what I’m going to find.