Slipstream

by Leslie Larson

  “Fuck off! I was sitting there, but I didn’t do it.”

  “Oh yeah?” the beefy guy said. “Well, look at this lady here. She’s got it all over her hands.”

  “Hold on!” Wylie shouted. He waited for the crowd to get quiet. “Everybody stay right where they are. I’m going to call security.”

  “I already called,” a male voice said from the back of the crowd. “They’re on their way.”

  “Well, then. We just wait,” Wylie said, embarrassed that the attention was now on him. The beefy guy let go of the Chicano, pissed that he’d lost his chance to play hero. The crowd shifted restlessly. Wylie looked down at the bar. The white powder had dissolved in the wet places. In others there were little chunks the size of match heads. He tried to remember who’d been sitting in that spot at the bar, but the day came back to him in disjointed fragments with large patches missing. The businesswoman who’d cried during her cell-phone call, the two longhairs who’d played poker, the cheerful mother and her sullen daughter. The pudgy guy chowing down pastries, the bodybuilder who’d spilled his drink. The three guys wearing gold chains, who drank orange juice. They really had looked like Arabs.

  Wylie was relieved when security got there. They swept in, cordoned off the area with yellow tape, herded all the people to the side.

  “I’ll miss my plane,” the woman with orangutan hair yelped.

  “How long is this going to take?” the guy who’d picked up a man asked.

  There was a lot of bustle around the bar. Some of the security people began inspecting the area while others tried to quell the objections of the patrons. Wylie noticed that somehow during the scuffle he’d cut his thumb. A line of blood ran down to his wrist.

  “Everybody take a deep breath,” said a man with a silver mustache who seemed to be in charge, raising his voice above the din. “We want to get you out of here as soon as we can, but it’s going to take some time. If everyone could step over to the side of the bar, these gentlemen here will take care of you.”

  Three men in suits herded the others away. “You can stay here,” one of them said to Wylie.

  “We had some other trouble, over in the gift shop,” the head guy told Wylie confidentially when his officers began to question the others. “Somebody left a threatening note. A gal found it while she was picking out a key chain.”

  The guy took out a notepad, wet his finger, flipped back the first page. Just like in the movies. His chest muscles looked firm beneath his white shirt, like he worked out. He took Wylie’s name, his contact info, who he worked for, the time he’d gotten there that morning.

  “Okay, now. Relax a minute. Let’s backtrack. I want you to try to remember. Just let your mind drift. Any details. Anything that comes to you. Let’s start with now and work our way back.”

  The embryo bobbed to the surface of Wylie’s mind like a dolphin. Bumped him with its rubbery head, stared with its octopus eye. Wylie had the feeling, startling in its intensity, that it was trying to signal him. To send him a message like the printed words that float up on the bottom of the Magic 8 Ball. An answer to a question: TRY AGAIN. FOR SURE. BEWARE.

  Wylie laughed, shook his head. If only he knew the question.

  The policeman looked up, his pencil poised above the paper.

  The little fish grinned, safe in its capsule of fluid, its embryonic nectar, its dark private sea.

  19

  Jewell lay in the big hall closet and listened to Celeste go about her morning routine. Water running in the bathroom, the toilet flushing, steps down the hall, dishes rattling in the kitchen sink. She was washing out her coffee cup, so it wouldn’t be long before she left. Jewell wondered what Celeste was wearing, pictured the preoccupied look on her face as she hurried around the house, gathering her things. Would she say good-bye, call out something to the accordion door of the closet? Celeste’s keys jangled, her shoes clicked to the door, the lock turned. The door opened, closed, and locked. Then it was quiet. Celeste was gone. There was only the morning and the silence of another day. The dull, aching throb in the pit of Jewell’s stomach.

  She had been sleeping in the closet for almost two weeks now, ever since the night she’d driven to Dana’s and found Celeste there. The futon, which she’d dragged off the frame in the living room, almost filled the space, which was basically the size of a jail cell. She’d stacked her folded clothes around one of the baseboards, plugged a crook-necked lamp into the one socket, and filled a plastic liter bottle with water to drink at night. Up near the ceiling was a handkerchief-sized window, on one wall were shelves that held furniture polish, folded paper bags, plastic knives and forks, crap they hardly ever used. It was pitiful. At night Jewell pulled the accordion door shut, stared at the square of dark sky, and cried.

  She threw back the sleeping bag she was using as a blanket and forced herself to get up. She had the breakfast shift that morning. After that, she’d go look at more apartments. She felt like a prowler creeping around the empty apartment, seeing the clothes Celeste had left on the bed the night before, the book open on the coffee table next to an empty mug. All the evidence that Celeste’s life was proceeding as normal: numbers she’d scribbled down near the phone, makeup in the bathroom on the back of the toilet, crusts of toast on a saucer in the kitchen. Jewell brushed her teeth. She still couldn’t believe it was over, that they’d reached the end of their road together and were about to part ways. In the meantime, living like this was torture. Sleeping in the closet; listening to Celeste move around the house; nodding to her in the hall; the raw, swollen silence. Jewell looked at herself in the mirror. She’d gotten paranoid, straining her ears to make out Celeste’s phone conversations, going through her things when she wasn’t home. Her face looked pale, shipwrecked, bewildered. She was a fucking zombie. Night of the Living Dead.

  She let the shower hit her on the back of the neck and played through the apartments she’d looked at so far. She was practically broke, so of course she couldn’t stay in this place alone, and the places she could afford were dives. She scanned the apartment-for-rent ads relentlessly. They whispered in her head all day long, speaking in secret code: w/w remod, clean, nu cpt, avail now, dntwn vu, prkg, lndry. It was like a prayer, language distilled to its essence. She washed her sad, unloved arms and legs; soaped and rinsed her untouched breasts and belly. nu pnt, snny dck, sm grdn, tp fl, hi ceil. The vowel-starved language hinted that, after all this was over, life might go on. There might be other rooms, other streets, other lovers. The broken syllables gave her hope.

  Jewell went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, but since the incident at Dana’s, she felt sick whenever she thought of eating. Pounds were dropping off; her pants bagged around her waist. She didn’t mind. It gave the look of reproach she shot Celeste whenever they saw each other that much more bite.

  She nosed through the garbage. Celeste was having no problem eating. Jewell found the remains of Vietnamese takeout from their favorite place near Chinatown. The order was written on the paper bag: sp rlls, 5 sp chkn. How could Celeste stand to go to the very place where she and Jewell had met so often at the end of the day, where they’d laughed and talked over steaming bowls of pho? Celeste’s dishes were washed, drying in the rack. Just like nothing was happening. Jewell choked down a glass of water. She looked out at the gray sky, the soggy yard. Already it seemed like years since she and Celeste had slept in the same bed, shared a meal, made love, or ridden in the car with the radio on. fpl, wlk-in clst, pet ok Jewell reminded herself. She felt skinned, open to the elements. Her organs—her heart, lungs, and kidneys—were tender, as though they’d been dropped in boiling water. Giblets. Stop, she told herself. Enough. lg rms, wd fl, gd lite. Her place was out there somewhere, she just had to find it. But right now she was late for work.

  She parked at the loading dock behind the cafeteria and sat for a minute in her dented red Nissan. A jet broke through the heavy clouds, and she watched it move like an arrowhead across the sky until it pierced an
other pocket of gray and disappeared. She thought of her father, who must have spent time sleeping in a space about the same size as the one she was sleeping in now. She yearned suddenly to see him. He lived here, in the same city. For all she knew, he could be blocks away. She could run into him by accident today. She shivered and pulled her sweater tighter around her neck. The loading dock was wet; a thick hose stretched like a python across it. The warm smell of frying doughnuts threaded the cold morning air that flowed through the Nissan’s window. Yellow light fell through the open double doors of the cafeteria.

  Jewell locked her car and walked up the steps on the side of the loading dock, careful not to slip on the greasy concrete. As soon as she stepped through the doors the warm air engulfed her, smelling of mass-produced food and sour rags. There was the clash of baking sheets and tub-sized pots, the groan of the huge ovens whose shelves revolved like Ferris wheels, the clatter of silverware and dishes being stacked. After the long, lonely night, the noise and light comforted her. She punched in, then went into the locker room to tie back her hair and put on her grungy shoes.

  The head cook stopped her on her way to the dish room. “Hey, Jewell. Where you been? Vicki’s out today,” he said. “We need you on the hotline.”

  Jewell hated the hotline. It was cleaner and less work than the dish room, but you had to stand there in a hairnet and a plastic apron and serve hash browns and French toast to your classmates.

  “Who’s in the dish room?” she asked.

  “Eli’s finished in the pot room. He can cover the dish room himself. Come on, hustle. They’re lined up all the way out to the dining room.”

  The steam table was loaded with pans of sausages, hash browns, Cream of Wheat, scrambled eggs, and French toast. Jewell pulled on latex gloves. Behind her was a grill. As the cook had said, a line of students with puffy eyes and wet hair, dressed in sweat clothes and flip-flops, snaked around the serving bay. They picked up trays that they loaded with drinks, silverware, and napkins before they came up to the hotline and told her what they wanted.

  She tonged the sausage and French toast onto their plates. Doled out scrambled eggs with an ice cream scoop. Over easy, sunny-side up: she worked the grill with quick snaps of the wrist, ladling out the egg for omelets, flipping the finished products expertly onto the plates. Logan, she thought as she jerked an empty pan from the steam table and added a new one of hash browns. Dad.

  Maybe it was the season, with Christmas coming on, or maybe it was breaking up with Celeste, but he was on her mind. The last time she’d seen him, at her high school graduation, he’d left his youngest daughter in her mother’s arms and motioned Jewell away from the crowd that had gathered in front of the auditorium.

  “C’mon. C’mon over here,” Logan had said, taking her by the hand and leading her down the street a little. When they reached the corner, he leaned against one of the parked cars and jammed his hands deep in his pockets.

  “So, how’re you doing?” he’d asked, glancing up and down the street, jittery. “You look good.” He grinned and nodded. “You turned out pretty good. You okay?”

  He was twisting the program in his hands. Jewell saw that he had it open to the honor roll, that he’d circled her name, the last one in the column, in shaky ballpoint.

  “I’m doing okay, Dad. I’m fine.”

  She peered into his face, half curious, half shy. He looked gaunter than usual, with hollow cheeks and stubble glinting on his face. The little patch of beard beneath his lower lip bristled like a small, furry animal when he chewed his lips. She sensed there was something he wanted to tell her, and she shifted her feet nervously, glancing across the street at a circle of boys with shaved heads who were passing around a joint while they talked, looking over in her and Logan’s direction now and then. In truth, Jewell felt hungover, having spent the night before partying with some of the very friends who were now hugging grandparents and receiving pats on the back, who were getting into cars, slamming doors, and driving away.

  “I’m proud of you, baby,” Logan said, gnawing at his lip. He pulled his wallet from his back pocket. “Here, I want to give you a little something.”

  “Oh no,” Jewell objected. “You don’t have to do that.” She tried to push his hands away before he could reach for the money. She laughed when she saw his wallet. “God, what happened to that thing? It looks like roadkill.”

  “What?” Logan said innocently, holding up his tattered wallet, which was stuffed with papers but flattened so that it did look like a squashed animal with its guts hanging out.

  “What’s all that stuff in there?”

  “This is my office, man,” Logan shrugged. “This is where I file important documents.”

  “Like what?” Jewell joked, feeling suddenly at ease with him. They knew practically nothing about each other, but just then her father felt familiar, as if they’d never been apart. “Let’s see what’s in there,” she said as she made a grab for the wallet.

  Logan dodged away. “Hey, hold on there,” he said, hiding it behind his back.

  “Come on, let me see.”

  They scuffled while the boys across the street watched with interest. Jewell managed to get hold of Logan’s wrist. “Show me!” she demanded.

  Logan laughed. “Okay, okay! I give up!”

  “Got any pictures?” Jewell said.

  “Well, let’s see.”

  Logan began to thumb through the wad of papers. “Bunch a shit, really,” he said. “Even I don’t even know what’s in here.”

  There was an article torn from a newspaper, yellow and crumpled. A receipt from Save-On, $3.47. A list squeezed onto a Post-it note. A small stack of photos that he didn’t bother taking out. “I guess everybody has one of these. It’s a—whadyacallit—a cliché,” Logan said, holding up a napkin with a name and phone number written on it. He pulled out a business card with a woman’s picture and scowled at it a minute. “Real estate agent. Guess somebody wanted to sell me a house,” he mumbled, crumpling the card in his fist. Then his face brightened. “Hey, here’s something you might be interested in,” he said, pulling out a color snapshot. One of the corners was bent. “What do you think about this?” he beamed, passing it to Jewell.

  She squinted down at it. It was a kid in a carnival ride, four boats attached to arms that went round and round a little pool of water. The kid looked about three. Wearing a hooded sweatshirt, she leaned over the side of the boat, looking into the water.

  “Is it me?” Jewell asked.

  “Sure it is. Who’d you think?”

  Jewell studied the picture. Never having seen it before, she felt like she’d just discovered some new part of herself. The fact that Logan was carrying it around, that he might even have been carrying it around all this time, made her feel dangerously close to crying.

  “See how you’re looking at the water?” he asked. “Me and your mom told you not to lean over the side and to keep your hands inside the boat. But you waited until it went around to the other side, behind that machine there in the middle. You thought we couldn’t see you. The minute you thought you were out of sight, bam, your hand went in the water. Then, when you came back around to where we were standing, you pulled your hand back in. See how you’re hiding your hand with the other hand? We laughed and laughed.”

  Jewell looked at him with amazement. Had he really been standing there, watching her, with her mother at his side? It seemed so normal, so unlike how she always imagined her family. And he remembered every detail.

  “Didn’t you get mad?” she ventured.

  Logan shrugged. “I guess we should’ve. You know, be consistent and all that. But you were just so damn cute, you know.” He took the photo from her, took one last look, and slid it back in his wallet. “I probably thought you took after me or something. You know, wanting to do something just because someone told you not to. Hey? Hey, what’s up?”

  Jewell’s chin quivered, then her chest heaved. Oh no. Her throat burned. There was no turn
ing back, she realized, she’d gone too far. The tears seemed to leap from her eyes. They splashed over her lashes, gushed down her face, even hit her knee on the way down, darkening the sheeny polyester of her rented gown. School colors, crimson and gold.

  Logan put his arm across her shoulder and drew her into his side. She felt his warmth, smelled his unknown life clinging to his clothes. What was it? Baked beans from a can, the sun-warmed upholstery of his car, laundry detergent bought from a machine at the coin-op, the scent of the woman who slept next to him? She’d never know. To her own horror she sobbed, pressing her face into his shoulder.

  “What is it, baby?” Logan pleaded, peeling her away so that he could see her face. “What’s wrong?”

  It passed quickly, a sudden squall. Jewell shook her head and wiped her eyes. She felt calmer, but now she wanted to be away from him. Still, she managed to smile. “Just, you know. Kind of an emotional moment or something.”

  Logan smiled back. He still had the wallet out and now he fished in it again, drew out two stuck-together twenties.

  “I wish it was more, but you take this.”

  “No. It’s okay,” she insisted. She was pretty sure Logan didn’t have much to spare. “Really. You don’t have to.”

  “Go on.” He poked it into her fist with his forefinger like a magician stuffing scarves into his hand. “Go out with your friends, have a drink on me.”

  Jewell laughed. “I’m eighteen. We’d get busted.”

  “Oh, okay. Minor detail. Well, how about this? Lemme buy you something. Is there anything you want?”

  “How about a car?” Jewell joked. “Or a condo?” Before she could suggest anything else, the woman who had come with Logan walked up and stood impatiently about twenty feet away, watching them. She was holding the baby on her hip; a diaper bag and a big purse dangled from her shoulders, weighing her down. The little girl, whom Jewell had held and admired earlier, was fretful now, squirming in her mother’s arms. The woman wrestled with her, shifted her to the other hip, struggled with the diaper bag.