Bombshell

by Rowan Maness

  The doorbell rang, and I ignored it. Probably a delivery—files for one of my mom’s cases or the monthly shipment of contraband wrinkle cream she orders from China. I started searching for a top to wear to the party later, but it seemed so tedious a task that I gave up immediately and went downstairs in search of food.

  The doorbell rang again. I stomped into the kitchen and threw open the refrigerator doors, grabbing a carton of leftover Chinese and a bottled iced coffee. I set them on the counter and pushed the talk button on the intercom mounted on the wall.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Hey, let me in.”

  Shane.

  “I’m busy,” I said, grabbing two pairs of wooden throwaway chopsticks from a drawer stuffed full of wooden throwaway chopsticks.

  “No you’re not,” Shane answered.

  I buzzed him in. I heard the door open down the distant, tiled hallway, then his footsteps squeaking—he’d been wearing the same pair of hideous Hush Puppies for the past two years. Predictably, the soft jingle of Ferris’s bell followed. Ferris was my dad’s cat. She hates women. And men too, actually, but she really likes Shane—maybe because he is neither.

  He was holding her when he came into the kitchen. He grabbed a soda from the refrigerator and sat on the stool next to mine, at the kitchen island.

  “Chinese, huh?”

  “Want some?” I offered. The cat settled down in his lap.

  He took the carton and I handed him the second pair of chopsticks.

  “Is there any of that stuff?” he mumbled. “The purple stuff?”

  “Fridge,” I answered. He put Ferris on the floor, and she followed him as he retrieved a tiny plastic cup of plum sauce.

  “I don’t get that cat,” I said when he sat back down and Ferris jumped into his lap again.

  “She’s a complex creature.”

  “Stupidly complex.” I reached out to pet her, and she swatted at me. Shane cleared his throat.

  “So, this is you ‘busy’?”

  “I’m preparing my body for tonight’s adventures. Caffeine and MSG are integral parts of my ablution process.”

  “Oh,” he said, and stopped talking.

  “What, Shane?” I snapped, annoyed he was making me ask.

  “I’m kind of surprised you weren’t Skyping with a serial killer, like usual.”

  “James is not a serial killer,” I said without thinking. I didn’t mean to use his name.

  Shane raised an eyebrow.

  We ate in silence for a while. The cat purred. Shane dripped plum sauce all over his shirt.

  “Heard from Dylan?” he asked finally.

  I laughed.

  “Last time he called he said he was someplace in Chile waiting to get on a ferry to an island with ‘a shit-ton of happy cows.’ My mom was not amused. Probably because she knows cows is code for shrooms.”

  “Ah.” Shane sighed. “God I miss him.”

  I missed my cue to say I miss him too.

  “Speaking of cow mushrooms,” Shane went on. “You have something to do tonight?”

  “Oh yes,” I said.

  “Something better than Yellow Submarine?”

  I took a sip of iced coffee and tried to make sense of those words.

  “Oh,” I said slowly. “Is this what Leah Leary was trying to tell me about?”

  “It’s playing at that old theater on Mill, all spiffed up.”

  “Spiffed up?”

  “You know, digitally restored or whatever.”

  “Yellow-er?” I teased.

  “I don’t know. So you can’t come?”

  “I don’t even really like Yellow Submarine anymore.”

  “You don’t?”

  When we were in second grade Shane and I once went three weeks without talking to anyone but each other. We wrote constitutions for imaginary worlds and lived in them for months—I always played the leader, and Shane was either my right hand or my worthy opponent. We were too young to hide parts of ourselves away or to keep secrets. But now we keep having versions of the same conversation. One of us references something we used to love, like Yellow Submarine, and the other says, Wait, I’m past that now. I don’t care about that anymore. Shane is the only person, aside from my mom and Dylan and a handful of cops in New Mexico, who knows about Peter. He got wrapped up in it. Maybe that’s when the split started. It’s probably my fault. Shane finally saw too much of me.

  “Anyway, I wouldn’t want to go with you and Leah Leary and mess up all your back-of-the-theater hand-job prospects,” I said, trying to keep it light.

  Shane grimaced. “That’s gross.”

  “Prude,” I said, smiling.

  “You have to stop calling her Leah Leary. Just call her Leah.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Yes you can,” Shane mumbled, standing, cradling Ferris in his arms. “Anyway, the movie’s at midnight, if you’re done with—whatever you’re doing.”

  I watched as he went to the kitchen sink and washed his wooden chopsticks, with soap and everything, still holding Ferris. It was really endearing. I felt bad.

  “Thanks for the invite,” I said.

  “I just thought you liked the movie, that’s all.”

  “I do. Or I did.” A thought occurred to me. “Ooh! Are you going to get stoned?”

  Shane laughed. “Not with Leah.”

  “No hand jobs, no weed, no psycho killers . . .”

  He laughed more, walking down the hallway.

  “See ya, Joss,” he called out.

  “See ya, Shane,” I called out after him.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Do not leave me here.”

  “Oh, relax. I’ll be gone half a second,” Rhiannon insisted, sipping her Corona.

  “What if someone tries to talk to me?”

  “Oh my God, how will you deal?”

  “Exactly—” I mumbled, scanning the crowd. A grungy dude leaning on a pool cue across the room had his eyes fixed on Rhiannon’s ass.

  “Do you know him?” I asked, pointing.

  Rhiannon turned around, then back, staring at her phone. “No, but cute. I’m going to see if he’s on Tinder.”

  “He looks like his name is Justin.”

  “No, no, no,” Rhiannon said, swiping her finger across her phone.

  “You can’t leave me here. I’ll start screaming.”

  Rhiannon finished the last of her beer and handed me the empty bottle, which I propped up on a cinder-block shelf against a stack of old VHS tapes.

  “Well, I was just going to go to the bathroom, but since you’re being such a baby, I think I’ll go introduce myself.”

  “No.” I groaned.

  “This is what people do at parties.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Be a big girl and fend for yourself,” Rhiannon said. “Or just stare at your phone and pretend to text.”

  She left. I watched her approach the Justin, confident, electric. Everyone else in the room was aware of her presence. Before they could trace her path back to me, I ducked into a shadowy corner, to survey the room and get my bearings.

  Rhiannon’s older sister, Guinevere, had reluctantly invited us to the house party of her mysterious friend Edwin, who always threw parties but never appeared at them. The room was dark, with dirty shag carpeting, lit by several strands of flamingo and pineapple-shaped lights.

  The only reason I agreed to go was the off chance that Kit Behr might be there. Kit Behr, real boy, caught my eye a week ago, after I started following Guinevere on Instagram. I was perusing her followers and came across his profile—it was surprisingly devoid of shirtless selfies, regurgitated memes, and pictures of beer-can towers. There were photos of him playing guitar on a rainbow-lit stage, ancient cacti formations, a road trip through Mexico with his best friend, cute videos of his toddler nephew.

  I almost switched over to a fake profile to send him a message, but something stopped me. I wanted to be Rosie for him, but it was too risky since she
had my face and Kit and I were only one degree of separation apart in real life. I wasn’t brave enough to friend him as myself, so I watched from far away and tried to think of what I’d say if we ever met. When Rhiannon asked Guinevere if Kit would be at Edwin’s party, she said, “Maybe. He doesn’t really party though.”

  A slight buzz and the possibility of Kit’s arrival were the only things keeping me from jumping onto the pool table and screaming out at the injustice of having to live in such a soulless place, where even the good parties are just outlines of what I was sure a good party could be.

  I wanted rooftop garden barbecues, beach bonfires, dinners where people drink old-timey cocktails and talk about stuff they read in the New Yorker. Cliffside quinceañeras in Barcelona, ritual sacrifices, anything but Edwin’s living room.

  Where’s Mary-Kate when I need her?

  I found a seat—an orange vinyl beanbag—and checked my phone for any new texts. Nothing. I sent one to Mary-Kate.

  Me: WHERE ARE YOU. Rhiannon abandoned me. It smells.

  Waiting for her reply, I logged into a dating site app, using the username and password of someone I’d created a couple days ago when I was supposed to be working on a paper about Madame Bovary for French lit. I scanned the profile questionnaire to refresh my memory.

  Thora is a twenty-seven-year-old art restorer working at a museum in Washington, DC. Her favorite movies are Amélie and Roman Holiday, she loves music but is a horrible dancer, the last book she read was—very creative—Madame Bovary, and she’s a vegetarian who’s scared of horses. She grew up in Utah (oppressive Mormon upbringing she’s still recovering from) and has always wanted to be an artist. There’s the slightest hint of bad ghosts of boyfriends past and fragile-girl trauma—enough to pique someone’s interest—but average, nonthreatening everything else. For her face, I found a blank-eyed blonde from Kansas with the mother lode of public Facebook photo albums.

  I thought about what Thora would be doing on a Friday night. Cocktails with the girls? Tiresome. Making pizza with her bestie, drinking wine and bitching about her boss? Too prosaic. Maybe she was on a date, the first in a long time—it wouldn’t go well, of course, but it could be something funny enough to write to a new guy about. Save it for later.

  Or she was working late at the museum. That’s something.

  Working late in a dark room. A room cluttered with old paintings, dusty and mildewed, waiting for Thora to bring them back to life. She’s made the workspace her own because she spends so many nights there. Cinder-block shelves, a beanbag, a strand of pink flamingo lights. There’s one of those high-up basement windows that she’s able to crack open slightly, and the room is full with the scent of night-blooming jasmine, which grows just outside. Thora has a big desk with bright lamps and giant magnifying glasses and jars full of tiny paintbrushes.

  Thora stands up straight for the first time in hours. She stretches her arms and neck, using the Pilates techniques from the DVD she watches halfheartedly while she eats gummy bears for lunch. She sets down her—

  I Googled “art restoration tools,” and avoided looking around for Rhiannon, scared I’d make accidental eye contact with a stranger.

  She sets down her heated spatula and cracks her knuckles. She needs a break. She’s a hard worker, to a fault, but it’s not because she desires praise. She likes what she does, even though she feels guilty that she isn’t doing something that will change the world. She loves to give paintings a second chance. Secretly, she feels like all the paintings she restores are hers. After all, without her, they’d be lost.

  Suddenly, someone plopped down next to me on the beanbag. The phone flew out of my hands, landing somewhere, camouflaged in the thick carpet. I reached for it immediately, then froze when I realized who it was.

  “Woah, sorry about that,” said Kit Behr.

  It was bizarre, seeing him in motion after scrutinizing his photos. Like meeting someone famous. His physical presence was overwhelming—I shifted, putting a few more inches between us.

  Smiling, he reached across my body and picked up my phone. I grabbed it from him before he could see Thora’s profile on the screen.

  In Arizona, even if a guy looks like an advanced creature, cute and new, he usually turns out to be another mouth breather. You find yourself bracing for the moment he inevitably says something disappointing, like “seriously, you believe all that evolution crap?”

  “It’s fine,” I managed. My mouth had gone completely dry.

  “I’m Kit,” he said, smiling again, holding out his hand.

  I shook it and said, “I know.”

  How do you know? No!

  “Uh, I mean, I know of you—from Guinevere.” I was grateful for the dim light, sure I was blushing. “You’re in Vesta, right? Guitar?”

  He’s smiling again—am I making him smile?

  He leaned back. The beanbag crunched. Something about his belt and the way it interacted with the bottom of his T-shirt made me feel embarrassed. I couldn’t decide where to look.

  “Yep. And you’re Joss,” he said.

  I picked at the shag carpet.

  “Yes?” I said, questioning. If you say I’m Joss, I guess I must be.

  He explained. “I’ve seen your Instagram.”

  I nearly choked on my own tongue. “Heh—what?”

  “You came up in the Explore section. Or, actually, a picture you took did. The Book, by Alan Watts? I love that book.”

  This was too much. Suddenly I was thinking of James. I wouldn’t want him to talk to a girl on a beanbag. We didn’t have the right to be possessive of each other, but I felt guilty. I pushed the thought away.

  Kit Behr has seen your Instagram. What’s on there? Friends. Plants. Bueller. Books, records, collages. Oh God, Mom’s comments—

  “I thought my profile was private,” I said, remembering to breathe.

  “Nicely curated,” Kit said, using the word but obviously making fun of it. This calmed me. He had a sense of humor.

  I ran my thumb across my phone’s screen, stroking it like a kid ruffling the silky edge of her security blanket, still unable to look directly at Kit.

  As I locked and unlocked the phone, it started ringing.

  MAX IS CALLING

  I pressed ignore and opened Instagram instead.

  “What’s your name?”

  “kittredgebehr,” he answered, spelling it out.

  “You don’t look like a Kittredge Behr,” I said, typing, bringing up his profile.

  “Half-Japanese. My middle name is Hiraku.”

  Thanks to my light stalking, I already knew both of those delicious factoids. And your mom was a model for a Japanese makeup brand in the seventies, and your older brother got a DUI in 2012. . . .

  I scrolled through his feed, pretending I was seeing all the photos for the first time, pretending to react to each one. When I looked up again he had his eyes closed, hands folded on his chest, rising with each steady breath. Framed by flamingos and pineapples, pink and yellow spotlights.

  Without thinking, I held up my phone and took his picture. He opened one eye when the shutter sound clicked.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “We’re friends now,” I said, worshipping myself, posting the picture to my profile. As I was tagging him in it, the phone rang again.

  MAX IS CALLING

  He won’t stop. He’s freaking out. Anna’s been gone too long. She’s fading. She can’t fade.

  “Uh,” I said, looking at Kit, who was opening and closing one eye at a time, staring up at the lights. “Excuse me for one second.”

  Ten thirty p.m. in Phoenix is seven thirty a.m. in Paris. Anna’s asleep in the hotel.

  I answered the phone. Someone turned the music up.

  It’s too loud for a hotel morning—

  “Hello?” I said, standing.

  Max’s voice. Always so jarring, with a New York accent. Too real.

  “Anna?” he said, and it came out sharp.

  “Hey,
Max!” I said, walking away from the beanbag, watching Kit Behr closely. He had no idea. The phone was a portal. On one end was Max’s world, his lab and the empty apartment he always said was so lonely, his anxiety medication, his hockey team. On the other end, a split in the wires. Anna bouncing wild off a satellite.

  I was staring at Kit and forgot to listen to Max. I could barely hear him. I pressed my head against the phone, plugging my free ear.

  “—I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  Max, the kind of guy who will pine forever over a girl he’s never met.

  She distracts him. He loves it.

  “Yeah! I crashed as soon as I got back to the hotel. Then I got a call about an hour ago. I heard I got that Ibiza shoot! I was just about to write you—it’s going to be lightning-round travel the whole day—”

  “What’s going on?” Max was saying, still sharp, accusatory, picking up on the discrepancies. I was being lazy with the lie. He knew it. He was thinking of all the times he’d ever suspected—

  “It’s Helena. She has this awful music blasting and she brought five other girls back to the hotel. They’ve been partying since last night. I’ve barely had a moment. She totally hates me—”

  Anna sighed. Max heard it, digested what she’d just told him. Thought of her perfect face, holding it large in his mind’s eye, a floating vision before him.

  Anna in her trashed hotel room with a bunch of Czech models who’ve been tripping since sunrise. Earplugs around her neck. Eye bags. Silk pajamas. Max sees her, reaches out.

  “I wish you were here,” Anna says, reaching back. “You’d keep me calm. You’d help me deal with this.”

  “Oh, baby,” Max coos to her. That’s what he needs, to be her man.

  “I have to go,” Anna says sadly, pulling back the heavy curtain at the window, looking out at Paris. Blinking against the bright, the city drenched in morning sun.

  “Write me a letter?” Anna asks.

  “Okay.”

  Max’s words aren’t sharp anymore. They’ve dulled. He’s satisfied.

  Anna shuts the curtain, and the whole room disappears.

  When I went back to the beanbag, I sat closer to Kit, pretending I didn’t mean to.