Closer Than They Appear

by Jess Riley

  The next morning Harper was running late for class and saw the Tubes and Hoses truck turning right as she pulled up to the stoplight on the corner of Franklin and Elm.

  What if I follow him? Just for a block or two.

  Even the thought felt inappropriate. But once the idea had formed, it was hard to resist. She pulled into the right lane. Her heartbeat was thrumming in her ears, her palms sweaty. There were two cars between them—a beige Buick LeSabre with a box of tissues in the back window and a greenish Subaru plastered in bumper stickers. She wondered if he’d glance in the rearview mirror and see her, so she slowed down a bit and let a blue Prius, blinker tick-tocking, in front of her. After a few more blocks he pulled into a Kwik Trip; he cruised past the gas pumps, parked near the front doors, and went inside. She stealthily followed suit, being sure to park farther away. Her heart thundered in her chest, and she slunk down in her seat, trying to figure out what to do next.

  Go inside.

  Before she knew it, she was opening the car door and walking on rubbery legs to the busy entrance. Luckily, there were so many people coming and going that it felt like Terminal 1 at Heathrow International Airport, which she’d been to once in college. Every other person leaving the store was carrying a bunch of bananas or a package of jerky. She slipped inside after a tall, slender woman in a power suit and orange Crocs. The check-out line stretched into the chip aisle. She didn’t see him and began to panic—what if he spotted her first? As her eyes adjusted to the chaos she finally saw him, with his back to her, at the self-serve coffee station. She circled around, against the wall of cooler doors, for a better look. Oh, he was handsome—he wasn’t tall, exactly, but he didn’t need to be. He was wearing navy work pants and a light blue pin-striped work shirt with an iron-on name decal on the chest. It was the kind of shirt that some guys wore during their hipster phase a few years ago. She couldn’t read the name decal. He wore no funny hats today, but he was wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses.

  He wore glasses?

  She couldn’t remember ever feeling butterflies in her stomach like this—she must have, because she’d had crushes before—but these weren’t nervous butterflies, they were joyful ones. Reciprocated ones. If she were handed some Crayons and asked to draw them, they’d be pink and purple and neon green, glow-in-the-dark with beautiful, lacy wings, every last one smiling, and they’d be wearing jaunty white hats and gloves.

  He turned slightly, and she realized he could nearly see her, so she back-tracked and opened a frosty cooler door. She stood in the gentle wash of cold air and pretended to check out the bevy of flavored iced teas before her. “Come Sail Away” by Styx was playing on the overhead speakers—a song much better suited for passing out on the couch with your hand in your pants and chip crumbs on your chest than meeting the attractive person you’ve been daydreaming about for weeks.

  He pressed a plastic lid on his coffee cup and got in line to pay the cashier. She lingered near the cooler doors, clammy and nervous, but deliciously so. He reached the front of the line and paid for his coffee, then prepared to leave. Should she approach and say something? Make it look like a random bump-into? And he was opening the doors, returning to the sunny parking lot. She moved quickly to catch up to him, terrific excitement pulsing through her body, but as he exited through one door an elderly woman walked in the other, soaked to the bone and covered in suds, furious. “Nobody told me I had to roll up my windows!” she ranted, blocking the path to both doors. “You should have posted a sign!” She was dripping all over the floor. The clerks behind the counter stared at her, frozen, unsure what to do or what, exactly, was going on. The rest of the customers also stared, bottles of Gatorade and candy bars temporarily forgotten. “Your car wash is defective!” the woman continued, shaking water droplets over the tiled floor.

  One of the clerks snapped out of it and rushed toward her with a roll of paper towels, apologizing profusely. “Are you hurt? Where’s your car?”

  “Still in the car wash,” she said. “Stuck!”

  An employee jogged out the back to check the drive-thru car wash, and another joined the fray with more towels—real cotton ones. At this point the agitated, soapy woman spotted Harper and recognized her. “Harper, oh my goodness! Will you just look at this mess?”

  The woman was a former client who’d been a huge fan of Harper’s cream of asparagus soup. Harper shook her head to clear it. “Mrs. Bauman, what happened?”

  “It’s terrible, terrible—this is the most confusing car wash. My car got stuck, and they don’t post signs telling you what to do!” The Kwik Trip employees continued to solicitously blot her arms, and one began to lead her toward the bathrooms, suggesting she stand under the hand dryers. Another employee arrived on the scene with a mop and a bright orange pop-up Wet Floor sign. As Mrs. Bauman shuffled to the back, still muttering angrily, Harper stepped over the puddle near the main doors. She pushed one open; it bing-bonged as she stepped into the parking lot. She shielded her eyes from the sun and glanced around, her pulse a hopeful, nervous staccato, but his truck was already gone.

  Zach

  HE WAS STILL feeling despondent about seeing his mystery girl with three young children when another rejection for his novel rolled in, this time with no accompanying post-script from his agent. Just an “FYI,” which felt clinical and depressing and made him pine for a paternal, “chin up, kid!” Almost immediately, he funneled his frustration into registering to take the Graduate Record Exam. He also composed an email to his agent:

  From: Zach McCarty

  To: Jeff Baxter

  Sent: Thursday, April 24, 9:31 AM

  Subject: RE: update

  Hi Jeff,

  I can’t remember if you have Last Summer out with any more editors, but I’m thinking I want to throw in the towel. Thanks for everything you’ve done for me. I’m applying to grad school to complete my MFA, and I’ll definitely drop you a line when I have another project ready for you. It might be a while, though.

  Thanks, Zach

  He paused before hitting “Enter.” But really, no matter how many times people tried to reassure him by saying things like, “Harry Potter was rejected, like a hundred times! I bet J.K. Rowling is glad she never gave up” or “Didn’t The Help get a butt-ton of rejections, too?” it never made him feel better, because he knew he didn’t have the next Harry Potter or The Help or Water for Elephants or Confederacy of Dunces on his hands. He’d written a scrappy, bright little novel, but it was too quiet, too self-indulgent even. And he didn’t look at it as quitting—it was more like shelving a bad product (say, Sylvester Stallone Pudding, or Colgate Kitchen Entrees) and going back to the drawing board.

  He wished yet again that he’d gone to school for something meaningful, something that would have directed him to a promising career he enjoyed. He wished he didn’t feel compelled to write. But if wishes were Kestrels, Lance Armstrong would ride.

  Just then, Josh came barging into the apartment with a package. “Hey, your four moms sent us something!” He flipped out a pocket-knife, drew it through the clear shipping tape, and opened the box. Nestled beneath a blanket of packing peanuts was a pair of fluted, non-stick aluminum shell pans, along with a booklet called 101 Things to Do with a Tortilla.

  “Great timing,” Josh said, picking it up and heading to the bathroom. “I needed something to read in the shitter.”

  Harper

  ON WEDNESDAY HARPER was deflated to find she’d missed him again; she was right on time, but he wasn’t at their intersection. She braked for a squirrel and drove on to class. Later, a mild cloud of disappointment followed her around campus—a tiny poof of listlessness, something you could shake after a good run or belly laugh, but disconcerting and distracting nonetheless. She decided to eat lunch at the student union, thoughtfully chewing a grilled veggie sandwich at a corner table near a bank of windows while she watched the younger students parade past in their lounge pants and back
packs. At twenty-eight, she was what the university euphemistically called a “non-traditional” student—she hadn’t known what she wanted to do with her life when she’d gone to college right after high school, so she majored in psychology and hoped for the best. She’d fallen into a job working the front desk at the administration building for a local public school district, and she loved the people she worked with—but it didn’t feed her soul, as she made the mistake of telling her mother once. “Feed your soul?” her mother had replied, wrinkling her nose as if she suddenly smelled a fart, “Harper, everybody hates their job. Is this an Oprah thing?” Harper could only frown, disappointed in her mother’s reaction but not terribly surprised.

  Really, it boiled down to this: life was short, and she wanted to do something meaningful with hers. Something she enjoyed doing. After Sam left, she went on a health kick, reading books by Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser and Marion Nestle, watching documentaries like Forks over Knives and Vegucated. Well, first she went on a junk food kick, not so much feeding her soul as feeding her back fat and that stubborn, paunchy spot below her belly button. But when she got tired of feeling tired and bloated and sad, she decided to go cold turkey on the cold turkey. You can’t control other people, you can’t stop someone from breaking your heart, but you can control how you react to it. You can definitely control how you treat yourself, and how quickly you put one foot ahead of the other.

  The health kick turned into something more permanent, and here she was, four classes from completing the Registered Dietician program, working as a personal chef for people with cancer, Crohn’s Disease, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes. Volunteering at the food bank in winter, pulling weeds on a CSA farm in summer, diagramming square foot gardens and composting and planting parsley and tomatoes and squash under fluorescent lights in April. Gardening and cooking—you can’t get much more optimistic and nurturing than that. (Well, other than parenthood, but that was a few years away at best.)

  Her phone vibrated in her purse. Natalie. “I kind of want to get a dog. Talk me out of it.”

  “Did you just watch Marley & Me again?”

  “No, but I was on Petfinder, because I was taking a break from job-hunting, and now I want to be a veterinarian. Well, maybe not a vet, but someone who rescues dogs from puppy mills.”

  Harper realized with shock that Natalie was crying. “Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m sad. And I have a job interview in a few days but I have this huge zit on my neck and I picked it and now it looks like I have a hickey and they won’t give me the job and when I get home I’ll feel even more sad because nobody will greet me at the door and just be happy to see me because I don’t have a dog.”

  “I’m always happy to see you! Everyone’s always happy to see you.”

  “This morning Brandon took my face in his hands and said to me, ‘You’re not exactly ugly, but you’re not exactly pretty.’ I’m raising a monster!”

  “You’re beautiful, and you’re not raising a monster. I believe the correct phrase is ‘spirited child.’”

  “Why does life never turn out like you think it will?”

  Harper sighed. “I think it was in the fine print on the kindergarten syllabus, but you miss so much when you can’t read yet.” She stuffed the uneaten half of her sandwich back in the brown paper bag and rolled it up. “I have a story that might make you smile.”

  “Yes, please tell me.”

  “Okay, did I tell you Aunt Ginger has a new boyfriend? He’s actually really nice and normal and everything, but when I stopped by the other night to drop off a quart of tomato basil soup, I walked in on them basically naked on her couch.”

  Natalie laughed, blew her nose, and said, “She’s kind of like her own sitcom character, isn’t she?”

  “Yep. But you could never tell her something like that, because she’d only become a bigger caricature of herself.”

  “I like caricatures. And dogs. Hey, where are you right now?”

  “At the student union. I have twenty minutes until my next class.”

  “Do you feel old there? Maybe I could go back to school, too.”

  Harper smiled. “Why, do you want to feel old?”

  “I wish I liked science and blood. I’d totally be a nurse. Or a veterinarian.”

  “You should be a plumber and get a job at Tubes and Hoses.”

  “No, thanks. Not until they change their logo. But if I did, at least I could flirt with your pretend boyfriend all day.”

  “You better not,” Harper said, laughing. “Nobody flirts with my pretend boyfriend but me, and only three days a week.” It started out funny, but talking about him summoned the fuzzy little cloud of melancholy again. When would she see him next? What if she never got a chance to hear his voice or see him smile at something she’d said?

  She said good-bye to Natalie, and started walking down a curving cement path to her next class, one foot ahead of the other, quickly.

  Zach

  HIS PHONE RANG while he ate lunch at the student union, where he’d gone to decompress after a meeting at the financial aid office and a quick visit with a former professor to discuss a potential graduate assistantship. It was his agent. He fumbled his phone and nearly dropped it in the puddle of ketchup near his French fries, a shot of adrenaline splashing into his stomach. “Hello?” he tried to sound cool and calm, the exact opposite of a person who’d been waiting for an unexpected phone call from New York for years.

  “Are you sitting down?” his agent said, and he sounded excited—more than excited, really. Zach’s pulse began to sprint. Was this it? Was this really it? His grip on the phone tightened, and he tried to think of a response but before he could answer, his agent added, “Just kidding. I always wanted to say that to you.”

  “Oh.” Zach blinked while his brain scrambled to re-set. He let out a bark of laughter, not in amusement but to let some of the pressure escape from his head.

  “Okay, okay, in all seriousness now. I got your email, and I was sitting on this news at the time so I didn’t respond because we had a few kinks to work out. But we have an offer!”

  Zach held his breath and closed his eyes, smiling so hard his face started to hurt.

  “Now, don’t get too excited, because it’s small, but it’s from a good, indie press. They only publish a handful of books a year, but they treat their authors well, and one of the editors, Mike Reynolds, abso-fucking-lutely loves your book. He wants a few changes, like the title especially, but nothing crazy, no big whoop, every first book needs a little trimming. He’s great to work with, has a great vision for the book and your career as an author.”

  His career as an author. And who cared if they wanted to change the title? They could call it Ten Easy Steps to Eliminate Radish Burps for all he cared—someone wanted to publish his book, and give him money to do so! He meant to ask something insightful and creative, perhaps more about Mike Reynolds’ vision for the book and his future as an artist, but when he opened his mouth, this came out: “How much is the advance, may I ask?” He groaned inwardly at himself—first that he cared how much the advance was, second that he’d added “may I ask?” Gross.

  “Twenty-five hundred, against royalties. They’re thinking hardcover, and it’ll be the lead title in their summer catalog next year. I know I don’t have to tell you how rare that is these days. But you’ve got a literary debut here, and they’ll push that angle, go for reviews with the standard-bearer heavyweights, all that jazz. Plus, you’re young and don’t have a face like a bagful of smashed assholes, so you’ll be a breeze to market. The next Jonathan Safran Foer and so forth. You’re on Twitter, right?”

  His head was starting to spin. His book … published! In print. Hardcover, no less. Who cared if after taxes and his agent’s cut it would only cover two months’ rent. Who cared if it was a small press. He’d have an editor. Someone who abso-fucking-lutely loved his book. If the reviews and word of mouth were good, he might make something of this.

&n
bsp; He had more questions for his agent, who answered what he could, and they set up a time for him to talk to Mike. His new editor, can you even believe that?

  “It’s a good book Zach,” his agent said before he hung up. “You should be proud. People are going to love it.”

  In a daze, Zach walked out of the student union and back to his truck. He wondered if this was how it felt to float around the space station on your first day in orbit. Colors looked brighter. He felt as if he could spontaneously burst into joyful flames, or at the very least, song. So he sang all the way home, to The Raconteurs and Trampled by Turtles and Pinback and Rod Stewart and even Bob Seger’s “Night Moves,” which he usually hated with the kind of malice his Uncle Gerald reserved for Facebook and the hippies on Whale Wars. He nearly ran out of gas because he wasn’t paying attention, but luck was with him tonight. For the first time in what felt like years.

  Harper

  “DO THESE PANTS make me look like a python that’s swallowed a deer? You’d tell me, right?” Natalie asked Harper, frowning down at her brown leggings, over which she wore a long, belted blue top with tiny pearl accents on the V-neckline.

  “Where do you come up with this stuff?”

  “I watch a lot of nature programs with the kids.”

  “You look great, seriously.”

  “Do I look like a panicked mother of three whose husband’s unemployment checks barely cover groceries and the mortgage?”

  Harper smiled sympathetically. “No, you look like the relaxed mother of a loving, precocious child you adopted from Luxembourg, and your husband is in high-demand as a clown at children’s birthday parties.”

  “What tricks can he do? Can he make good jobs appear out of thin air?”

  Harper and Natalie were at Oblio’s, one of the more popular bars among both the college set and an older crew that played as hard as they worked. It was also one of the few places in town—with a high, engraved tin ceiling, elaborate mahogany back bar embedded with stained glass, hanging globe lights that had been resurrected from old churches, and twenty-seven beers on tap—where you could play pool, share a round of Irish Car Bombs with a stranger, and debut an expensive pair of sandals or dry clean only shirt you found via My Habit without feeling overdressed. The air was infused with the scents of popcorn and perfume and stale cigarette smoke and yeasty beer, but beneath all that, decades of stories and laughter and shameful hook-ups wafted from the woodwork. You could smell Prohibition, and bell bottom blues, and glitter and confetti and cheerful resolutions from New Year’s Eve, 1984.