Hide Your Eyes

by Alison Gaylin

  I watched my friend’s face as he scanned the room for Peter Steele, but his expression remained neutral, his baby blue eyes darkened. “Do you think he was lying about working here?” he asked.

  “Who would lie about being a waiter at Ruby Redd’s Brewing Company?”

  Yale and I sat on two crimson counter stools, and a young waiter with spiky burgundy hair and a red name tag that said “Tredwell” approached us.

  “Hi, Tredwell,” Yale said as he accepted two long, rectangular menus encased in cherry velveteen. “Did you color your hair to match the restaurant or vice versa?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. We’re looking for Peter Steele?”

  “You guys are friends of Peter’s?” Tredwell said.

  Yale exhaled audibly. “He does work here.”

  “Yeah. His shift doesn’t start ’til later, though.”

  We decided to stay anyway. I hadn’t eaten a thing since before I’d puked, and I realized I was starving. I ordered my typical posthangover meal: a cheddar omelet with a side of bacon, buttered rye toast and black coffee.

  Yale gave me a disdainful look and pointedly asked for grilled vegetables and green tea.

  “Oh, I never shared my other lovely news,” I said, after the waiter walked away. “You remember Nate, don’t you?” I whipped the Post out of my bag and placed the entertainment section in front of Yale as Tredwell returned with our steaming red mugs.

  Yale stared at the article. “You have got to be kidding.”

  “Stupid, huh?”

  Yale jerked his tea bag up and down, up and down. “Well . . . it’s not as if he’s on Broadway.”

  “No. He’s making more money than that.”

  “How’d you two kids like some cream with your coffee and tea?” asked Tredwell.

  “He cheated on you with a man and a woman!” Yale was inadvertently using his stage voice, and I could feel customers turning to stare at us, or, rather, at me.

  “Could you possibly keep it down?”

  “Nathan Gundersen bisexually cheated on you and he gets to make more money than the emcee in Cabaret? What the fuck kind of karma is that?”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Well,” he said. “There is more to life than just making money as some flash-in-the-pan, so-called ‘hunk’ on an inconsequential daytime soap opera.”

  “You guys know Nate Gundersen?” Tredwell said.

  Yale ignored him. “The minute that ass drops—and let me tell you it will drop—not a soul in the universe will return his calls. Male, female, canine, bovine . . . No one. Because beneath that . . . that gaudy exterior, he has no substance. No . . . intelligence.”

  “He graduated from Stanford summa cum laude.”

  “Oh, for shit’s sake!”

  Tredwell was still standing over us, a tiny red pitcher balanced on his palm.

  “We would not like any cream!” said Yale.

  I said, “You sound angrier than me.”

  “I know. It’s just . . . God. I hate Nate for what he did to you. He doesn’t deserve anything.”

  “We’re in agreement there.”

  “And, not to sound selfish, but it isn’t fair to me either.”

  I looked at him.

  “Hey, I work hard, and I strive to be a good person, and I’ve never cheated on anyone, let alone bisexually cheated on them, and that prick can do any play that he wants while I’m lucky to get a chorus part at a dinner theater on Long Island. He’s clearly stolen my hard-earned good fortune.”

  I couldn’t help but smile a little.

  “And . . . and then you tell me he’s summa cum laude? I mean, he has money and fame and fans and . . . and that ass, and now I can’t even take comfort in his possible stupidity? What am I supposed to do about that?”

  My smile grew broader. Yale had a talent for making himself the injured party in any given situation—particularly the ones that were actually damaging to me. It was oddly soothing, the way he asked me to help him with my problems. “You have a very nice ass,” I said.

  Yale gave my hand a squeeze. “Get this away from me.” He folded up the Post and stuffed it back in my bag.

  Meanwhile, the waiter was lingering like bad breath.

  I said, “I swear to God we don’t need anything else.”

  Tredwell put down the cursed pitcher of cream, knocking over a saltshaker in the process. I pinched up some salt, tossed it over my left shoulder and glared at him.

  Tredwell stared unblinkingly over our heads, and then slowly, his lips parted. “Whoa,” he said softly, and proceeded to knock over my coffee.

  Tredwell brought new meaning to the words economy of movement. With hot coffee streaming over the edge of the counter and onto the decidedly nonwaterproof shoulder bag that sat in my lap, he waited several seconds before slowly reaching behind him, grabbing a stack of paper napkins and placing them in front of me without so much as offering to help. As Yale used some of the napkins to dam off the coffee, I tried to sop up my purse. “We could use a few more napkins here, buddy,” Yale said, but Tredwell just stood there like a lamp.

  A deep, inflectionless voice behind us said, “Turn around, Bright Eyes.”

  Yale gasped. “Peter . . . don’t you look . . . striking today.”

  “Can I have some seltzer water?” I said, but Tredwell remained paralyzed. I didn’t care how good-looking Peter Steele was, this little creep wasn’t getting a tip.

  I looped the shoulder strap over the counter stool so the bag was facing out at the room behind me. “I guess I’ll just have to air this out then.”

  Peter’s voice was saying, “Well, come on. What do you think?”

  “They’re definitely interesting,” Yale said.

  “They’re one of a kind. At least that’s what the guy at the contact lens place told me. I can’t decide whether they’re hot or scary.”

  “I’d say they’re a little of both.”

  “Know what they’re called? Magic Mirrors.”

  I spun around on the counter stool and looked at his face. “Shit.”

  “Who’s she?”

  I cleared my throat. “I’m Yale’s friend Samantha.”

  “Golly,” he said. “Taking the gals to meet me already.”

  “Sam’s my best friend.”

  “Not to be rude, but what an ugly bag. Not you—your purse.”

  “I told you, Sam.”

  “Magic Mirrors,” I said.

  “Cute name, huh?”

  “Cute.”

  Yale said, “I hate to break it to you, Peter, but I don’t think those contacts are one of a—Sam! You kicked me!”

  “Sorry. It was an accident.”

  “I need something,” Peter said. He reached out and took Yale’s hand in his, then slowly brought it up to his mouth. Watching my face, he ran his full lips along the length of its underside, from the base of the palm to the tip of the middle finger. “That’s better,” he said.

  Yale opened his mouth and closed it again, his cheeks coloring.

  “I have to go to the bathroom.” I grabbed the damp shoulder bag and headed for the rear of the restaurant on stiff, uncooperative legs.

  All the while, I felt Peter’s mirrored eyes staring at the back of my head.

  “Okay,” I said to my reflection. “Okay, okay, okay.”

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been in this giant corpuscle of a bathroom, with its red toilet, sink and light bulbs; nor how long I’d been repeating the word, but it was starting to sound foreign. “Okayokayokay . . .”

  I looked deep into my own pupils, maroon under the tarty lights, and thought about Peter’s eyes, how they didn’t have pupils. I thought about how, when he’d turned towards me, all I could see in them were tiny, distorted segments of my own face. When he’d mouthed Yale’s hand, I’d seen doubles of my top lip.

  They were the same eyes as the Hudson River man’s, and Peter had said his contacts were one of a kind. “Okayokay . . .”
/>   Peter had close-cropped, dark hair, a broad, smooth forehead, black eyebrows. “Okay.”

  What an ugly bag, he’d said, bits of orange and brown embroidery in his eyes. The bag had been everywhere with me—the construction site, the box office, Great White. Was he letting me know he’d seen it before? Was he letting me know that he’d seen it—and me—before he tracked down and seduced my best friend? Was he letting me know that he could go anywhere, be anywhere at any time, that there was nowhere for me to go, nowhere for me to hide?

  Yale would think I was insane if he were to hear me muttering into the mirror of the world’s reddest bathroom, considering the possibility that his gorgeous new boyfriend was a murderer and stalker who had spent Valentine’s Day dumping a picnic cooler full of body parts into the Hudson.

  He would think I was insane, and I wouldn’t blame him. Peter was probably not the same man I’d seen at the river. And even if he was . . . body parts? More likely there was something harmless in the ice chest. Something along the lines of trash, battery acid, old clothes . . .

  Why couldn’t I shake off this suspicion? Why was I afraid to leave the bathroom? Why couldn’t I imagine myself saying, “Hey, Peter. Didn’t I see you and a woman down by the piers?” if there wasn’t anything wrong with Peter and a woman being down by the piers?

  I splashed cold water in my face. “Okay,” I said again. The muscles at the base of my skull clenched up, my headache was starting to return. I had to eat something. Somebody knocked on the door. I clutched the edge of the sink and took a deep, trembling breath. Finally, I unlocked the door and headed back for the counter.

  “That’s the men’s room, you know,” a male voice called after me.

  “Are you all right?” Yale asked when I returned.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “We thought you fell in,” said Peter.

  “I was . . . in the men’s room.”

  “Well, that explains it.” Peter winked a mirrored eye at me. I could see part of my cheek in it, a wisp of my hair.

  Peter had taken my seat at the counter, and Yale stared at him as if he were watching Les Mis for the first time. “Sam, Peter. Peter, Sam . . .”

  “You look familiar,” said Peter. “Have we met before?”

  I watched Tredwell put my lunch in front of the empty seat on the other side of Peter and said, “I don’t think so.” My eyes darted back to his. Now they were filled with the faint black and gray pattern on my V-necked sweater.

  Yale was right. His face was beautiful. It looked as if someone had spent long, loving hours sculpting every smooth inch of it, and his skin was glowingly tan despite the time of year. He had the ripe, bloated mouth of a Cosmopolitan model. I imagined it covered by a black scarf.

  “You’re staring at me,” Peter said—not unkindly, more like he was used to it. “Do I have something in my teeth?” In his eyes, I could see where the pale skin of my neck met my black T-shirt collar.

  “I really hate those lenses.”

  “Sam!” said Yale. “You have to forgive her, Peter. She saw someone else with contacts like that and . . .”

  “Shut up, Yale.”

  “You couldn’t,” Peter said. “They’re one of a kind.”

  “Then maybe it was you I saw.”

  “Maybe it was,” he said through pearlescent teeth. “Maybe that’s why you look so . . . fa-mil-iar.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sam, why don’t you sit down?” Yale said. “You’re making me nervous.”

  I obliged, more out of hunger than anything else, and shoved a piece of toast in my mouth.

  Peter said, “I saw you throw salt over your shoulder before. I know a lot about old superstitions. You know what you were doing when you did that?”

  I dug into the lukewarm omelet. “Not really.”

  “You were trying to blind the devil!” He started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny about that?”

  “Come on. A grown, educated woman in New York City throwing salt in the devil’s eyes? I mean, it is kind of . . . stupid when you think about it.”

  Yale chuckled. “That is funny. Well, let me tell you, Sam is soooo superstitious. My God, it’s practically a psychosis. I mean, if you’re in a hurry to get somewhere, and the closest distance between two points happens to be under a ladder, then you can just forget about it. She will literally go blocks out of her way to avoid stepping under that ladder. I’ve seen it happen. She’s crazy.”

  Peter stopped laughing.

  I stared at Yale.

  “I don’t mean crazy. I mean . . . fun.”

  I shoved more omelet in my mouth. At least my headache was starting to go away. “So,” I finally said to Peter. “You do anything else besides wait tables and pick up complete strangers at after-hours bars?”

  Peter turned his body towards me, and I felt my heart speed up. I avoided his eyes, watched his mouth. “I breathe,” the mouth said. “I eat. I smoke. I fuck.” Abruptly, he leaned in so close I could feel his warm, odorless breath on my skin. “I bet you don’t . . . smoke. I bet you haven’t smoked for years.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. How can you keep your vegetables down, Yale?”

  His face flushed. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing. I just thought you might be feeling as nauseous as I do.” I pulled a handful of bills out of my ugly bag and tossed them onto the counter.

  Peter turned back to Yale. “You’ve got great friends.”

  “Whatever, good-bye.” As I reached for my bag, I noticed a tattoo on the back of Peter’s neck. It was a dark red pentagram, just about the size of a quarter. The small shape was thickly drawn and amateurish—almost as if it had been put there with a branding iron—and it made me feel as if someone were squeezing all the air out of the room. “You better come too, Yale. We’re going to be late for work,” I said, my voice shaking. “I’ll meet you outside.”

  “Wait a minute, Sam!” Yale said, but I kept walking until I reached the front door and stepped outside and onto the freezing gray sidewalk.

  When Yale left the restaurant a few minutes later, he already had a lit cigarette in his hand. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he said, exhaling blue-tinged smoke.

  “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? Is your brain that firmly embedded in your pants? He’s an asshole, Yale. A hostile, misogynous asshole. I can’t believe you wanted me to meet him.”

  “Number one, he is not a misogynist—he just has a slightly off sense of humor, which you might have even appreciated if you weren’t so hell-bent on hating him. Number two, you were the hostile one in there. I mean, Jesus. You do anything else besides wait tables and pick up complete strangers? What kind of a question is that?”

  “Yale . . . I think he might be the same man I saw at the river.”

  “Oh, spare me. Did you feel Dead Man’s Fingers again?”

  I glared at him.

  “You get chills up your spine, you see a couple dumping trash, and your mind just spins out of control. Think about it. Just do me a favor and think logically—”

  “Did you see the way he glared at me when he told me I look familiar?”

  Yale blinked. “You know what you need? You need a good night’s sleep, you need a few healthy meals—”

  “Peter himself said the contacts were one of a kind.”

  “He bought them this morning.”

  “What?”

  “After you left, I asked.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “You think little Tredwell would’ve been that shocked if he’d worn them during his weekend shifts? Peter’s contact lens salesman lied to him, the couple was not disposing of body parts, and you are not psychic. Now, if you don’t mind, I am going to walk to work by myself and smoke an entire pack of cigarettes.”

  Yale buttoned up his cashmere coat. It was deliciously soft and chocolate brown and to wrap it around your shoulders was to feel unconditionally loved. His parents had given it to h
im for Christmas. I’d been at his apartment when he’d opened the UPS box. “And you don’t have to worry about Peter, because you scared him off. He says no one’s worth the company I keep.”

  I stood there for several seconds, watching Yale’s brown cashmere back disappear up Sixth Avenue. I hadn’t mentioned the tattoo; not that it would’ve made any difference.

  My throat felt raw and knotted, and pressure was building up behind my eyes. I knew I wouldn’t start crying on the corner of Sixth and West Fourth in broad daylight with thick groups of pedestrians rushing past me towards the subway, but I wanted to.

  I looked at my watch. It was two ten already, with at least ten more minutes to get to the theater, even if I ran. There was a pay phone on the corner, so I fished around in my bag for a quarter and called work.

  “Thank you so much for calling the Space.”

  At first, I didn’t recognize the voice, but then it hit me. “Hi, Hermyn. Roland’s got you answering phones now, huh?”

  “Oh, hi, Samantha. I thought you were my mother.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Can you tell Roland that Yale and I are running late? We both had to run a few errands.”

  “Okay. He was wondering where you guys were, so he’ll be glad you called . . .”Hermyn’s voice tilted up at the end of the sentence, like she wanted to talk. I was freezing, and although I felt sorry for her, sitting on her hard little chair near the door with Shell Clarion staring bullets through her back, I was in no mood to discuss her wedding plans. “Bye,” I said, and hung up before she could respond.

  Two minutes later, I was navigating my way through a slow-walking family of eight on West Tenth. “Excuse you!” shouted the grandmother when I brushed by her mink. I stopped and examined her. Like the rest of her family, she had pink cheeks, a huge head and a thick, sturdy body. They were, I decided, on vacation from a safe, friendly state, embraced by land on all sides. “Fuck you,” I said, because I didn’t feel like saying “sorry” to some landlocked old mink-wearing bitch right now.