Miss Misery

by Andy Greenwald

  As night fell, the Satellite Heart started to beat faster. Franta let Andre turn the volume up and the dimmers down. The whiskey also had its effect. I found myself talking more, glancing at my watch less. I couldn’t seem to remember the world outside of this strange, red little room. And that thought alone made me something close to giddy.

  Cath’s friends who had shown up were the ones she always referred to in her diary as the VSC. There was her roommate, little Stevie Lau, who wore an electric-blue jumpsuit and vintage Chucks and was Andre’s boyfriend—or at least he was this week. There was Debra Silverstein, a hyperactive assistant copy editor at Vanity Fair and admitted Anglophile. And there was Ben There, the leader of the crew. He was six foot one and ghostly pale and if it weren’t for the rainbow-colored tattoo of a hawk that circled his neck, he’d be indistinguishable from a cadaver, no doubt the victim of a mosh-pit riot he’d incited. Ben There had earned his name for his perpetually jaded attitude and earned his money from his deceased parents. According to Cath, he slept all day in his Alphabet City loft before rising at six p.m. to eat waffles and play Xbox Live. Then he went out and partied until sunrise. Every night.

  “So, David.” Ben There smoked theatrically, and everyone shut up at the sound of his voice. “Didn’t I see you last night at the Beauty Industry secret show? At the Delancey?”

  Cath—long past drunk—let out a high-pitched giggle.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What was I doing?”

  “Running around the dance floor like a great big crazy person, trying to bum a smoke off of every member of the band.”

  I sighed. “Unfortunately, that’s beginning to sound like me, yeah.”

  Stevie piped up. “How was the show?”

  Ben There stubbed out his cigarette, arched his eyebrows sarcastically, and gave Stevie a look.

  “Oh,” said Stevie.

  When Debra began laying out the various options for the rest of the night—a gallery opening in DUMBO, an hour of free Red Stripe at Rothko, a GoGo Bordello show at Barrio—I leaned into Cath and felt a thrill when she leaned back.

  “Cath,” I said. My breath smelled like whiskey but I didn’t care; hers smelled like Parliaments. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

  “What is it?”

  “What the hell does VSC mean? Does it stand for something?”

  Ben There and Stevie announced that the first “part” of the night was up to Debra, but they were not going to miss the Fader party that started at three a.m.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” she giggled again. “They’re the Vampire Social Club.”

  A wolf howl emanated from the couch across from me.

  “Sorry!” said Debra, as she reached for her Sidekick and began typing into it frantically. “I have it programmed to make that noise when someone IMs me.”

  “Cute,” I said as the wolf howled again.

  These vampire socialites were only a few years younger than me, but I felt like their grandfather. Their very drunk grandfather. I turned back to Cath.

  “How did you meet these people?”

  “Oh, you know—online, mostly,” she sipped her umpteenth drink demurely through a miniature straw. “Ben There used to hang out in the old AOL punk-rock chat rooms and brag about how unpunk the rest of us were, how we didn’t know anything. He started liking me because I bought all the albums he told me to, like Indian Summer and Moss Icon.”

  “Yeah, but how did you, like, meet him meet him?”

  “Oh, you mean IRL?” She laughed. “In real life? I road-tripped to New York when I was seventeen and stayed with him. My dad thought I was visiting Angie in Quebec.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said, her eyes shining. “It was pretty wild.”

  “You had no problem traveling to another country to sleep with some guy you’d never even met?”

  She frowned. “Come on, dude—I’d met him. I mean, I knew him. Distance doesn’t mean shit online, anyway; he was a hell of a lot cooler than the girls at Holy Cross.” She sighed and looked at the tall, ghostly figure across from us as he smoked and shot down plan after plan from the other members of the VSC. “I think I knew him better then, really. Before I met him. Online he was just more…honest.”

  Behind us Andre started playing “Burning Photographs,” the one Ryan Adams song I legitimately liked. I gave him a one-drink salute, which he returned with a sarcastic flourish.

  “So are you really going to set up this meeting for me?”

  “What,” she said, “the one with yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  She lit a cigarette. “Yeah, of course. I already texted him about it.”

  “You did?”

  “Yup.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Nothing.” She exhaled a thin stream of ivory smoke. “He just sent me one of those winky emoticons.”

  I sat back. “Great.”

  Cath inhaled and her cigarette glowed as red as the room. “You know, for the same person, you two Davids are pretty fucking different.”

  Ben There leaned forward. “What are you two little birds twittering about?”

  Cath blushed. “Nothing. David just wants to get to know himself a little better.”

  Ben There twisted his mouth. “And you’re the person to help him do it?”

  Cath stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette. “Maybe. Who the fuck knows.” She stood and stumble-stepped to the bathroom.

  Ben There watched her until we all heard the click of the bathroom lock. “She’s quite the live one, our little Miss Misery.”

  “Yeah,” I said, still looking at the bathroom door. “She’s something.”

  Two minutes later, Cath came rocketing out of the bathroom, cell phone in hand.

  “He wrote back again,” she said.

  I put my latest empty glass down, stopped smiling. “He did? What did he say?”

  Cath collapsed on the couch next to me, tossed her phone in my lap. “See for yourself.”

  I flipped open the phone and looked at the message there.

  1 New Text Message From: David

  9:48 p.m.

  Ask David how Amy is doing, would you?

  I felt sweaty and sick and quickly closed the phone.

  “Who’s Amy?” said Cath, snatching her phone back.

  “She’s…” My tongue felt thick in my mouth. “She’s my girlfriend.”

  Cath raised one eyebrow. “You guys share a girlfriend and her name is Amy?”

  Just the mention of Amy’s name in this place, on this night, felt like a stomach punch. I was suddenly sober and my ears were ringing. What the fuck was I doing with these people? In this life? When I still hadn’t spoken to the person I loved most?

  “Whoever this”—just the words sounded crazy in my throat—“imposter person is, he definitely does not know my girlfriend.”

  Cath smirked. “How do you know? I mean, if you look the same, maybe she couldn’t tell…”

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “Why are you out with me anyway if you have a girlfriend? Shouldn’t you be home with her?”

  “She’s not there.”

  “Where is she? Canoodling with you number two?”

  “Stop. She’s in The Hague.”

  “What the fuck is a Hague?”

  “Not a Hague. The Hague. It’s a city. In Europe.”

  Cath lit another cigarette. “Lucky Amy.”

  I hated the way her name sounded in Cath’s mouth—like something small. Something tiny. Something to be mocked.

  I stood up. “I have to go.”

  Debra looked up from her IM conversation. “You do?”

  Ben There smiled lazily. “Better plans?”

  “I just…” I felt wild standing there, out of control. I felt a thousand pairs of inebriated eyes boring holes into my body. “I just have to go. Nice to meet you all.” I tripped slightly over the table, then walked quickly to the door. Behind me, I heard Debra’
s phone howling at the moon.

  “Good-bye, David!” Franta yelled from the bar. “Don’t go back to Rhode Island!”

  I gave a halfhearted wave in his direction, then shot out and into the night. It felt like walking through an airlock—except that outside wasn’t outer space, it was another dimension. The air was humid and thick; people’s voices were loud and garish; the headlights of passing taxis seemed luridly yellow. I stood at the top of the steps, feeling my heart race in my chest. Feeling strangely guilty.

  The door behind me opened and shut.

  “So that’s it?”

  It was Cath, standing at the base of the stairs. I turned.

  “Yeah, that’s it. I have to go home.”

  “Huh.” She stood with her arms crossed. She had a flat shine of perspiration on her forehead and flecks of ash on her white shirt.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, Cath. You’ve been really nice to me. Thanks. But…I don’t know you. I don’t know these people.”

  She kicked at the metal stair. “I thought you knew me too well.”

  “Right. Well, one or the other.”

  We stood looking at each other. I ran my hands through my crinkly, suddenly stylish hair.

  “Please set up some sort of meeting for me, Cath. I need to make this stop.”

  “OK, David.” She turned to go. “But I’m not sure that’s what you really need.” She pulled the door open, and then she was gone.

  The bright lights of the F train were making me nauseous, so I rode most of the way home with my eyes closed, pushing hard against the sockets with the heels of my hands until I saw nothing but skittering fireflies. So that was Miss Misery, I thought. No—that was Cath. They were both whirlwinds, but only one was real. And after just one night with her, I felt like the Kansas heartland, post-twister.

  “My name is Sonny Payne. I’m homeless and I’m hungry.”

  I looked up. We were at the Jay Street stop, and Sonny—the oldest and most reliable of the F-train panhandlers—had entered my car and launched into his routine.

  “If you don’t got it, I understand because I don’t got it. But if you could spare some change, some food, a piece of fruit…”

  When he passed me, this little old black man with the snow-white beard who had been riding the trains with me ever since I moved to this city and would probably remain long after I had moved, I dropped a pocketful of change into his gnarled hand.

  “God bless you,” he said.

  “Get home safe,” I said, whatever that might mean.

  “You too,” he said. And moved on his way.

  As I walked up the hill from the subway, I clenched and unclenched my left hand, wishing there was another hand there to fill my own. I loved Amy. I knew that. I thought of her, then: of the hundreds of times we’d made this walk together, what it felt like to laugh with her, sleep next to her, look after her. But below that was another feeling, a newer sensation that ran through my stomach like a zipper. It was the tangible memory of the evening that had just ended, the manic weightlessness of the VSC’s world. Of strange new possibilities; of Cath’s fingernails on my scalp.

  I had wanted this, hadn’t I? Recklessly, stupidly. And now I had to deal with it.

  Back in my apartment, I deleted two messages from Watkins, drank three glasses of water, took four Tylenol, turned on the air conditioner, and got changed. I felt the early tremblings of a hangover in my skull and behind my eyes. With the lights still out, I flipped on my computer, signed onto Instant Messenger. A window popped open almost immediately.

  TheWrongGirl87: hey

  davidgould101: hey Ashleigh

  davidgould101: what’s up?

  TheWrongGirl87: um

  TheWrongGirl87: tell me what I have to do to have your life again?

  davidgould101: :-P

  davidgould101: wow

  davidgould101: why does everybody want my life all of a sudden!

  TheWrongGirl87: ???

  davidgould101: Apparently my life is really easy to have—I’m not the only one who has it.

  TheWrongGirl87: ???

  davidgould101: Never mind. Strange day. What do you mean?

  TheWrongGirl87: I cant do it i just cant do it anymore

  TheWrongGirl87: its all unfair

  TheWrongGirl87: soooooo unfair

  davidgould101: what happened

  TheWrongGirl87: my parents. they happened.

  davidgould101: tell me

  TheWrongGirl87: I brought home the lit mag today to show them. I thought that MAYBE if they saw my stuff printed they’d say something

  TheWrongGirl87: like compliment me or something

  TheWrongGirl87: yeah right

  davidgould101: what did they do?

  TheWrongGirl87: first? they screamed at me.

  davidgould101: why? what poem did they read?

  TheWrongGirl87: the one I sent you. ‘in blood red.’

  TheWrongGirl87: they called me dirty and blasfemous (sp?)

  TheWrongGirl87: and they ripped up the whole magazine

  davidgould101: no way that’s horrible

  TheWrongGirl87: it gets worse

  TheWrongGirl87: then they called the principal and demanded that all the copies of the mag that were handed out at school get destroyed

  davidgould101: :-o

  davidgould101: no way

  davidgould101: what happened?

  TheWrongGirl87: I dunno. im not allowed to leave my room. I guess I’ll find out tmw

  TheWrongGirl87: its so stupid

  TheWrongGirl87: so so stupid

  davidgould101: ashleigh I’m really sorry. no one should have that happen. its unfair, but you’re almost out of there right? one more year?

  TheWrongGirl87: yeah

  TheWrongGirl87: I guess.

  TheWrongGirl87: I just wish I could have a different life, you know? I want everything to be different and I want it RIGHT NOW

  davidgould101: be careful what you wish for.

  TheWrongGirl87: why? everything sux. I want to leave.

  TheWrongGirl87: yr so lucky you get to write anything

  davidgould101: well, not anything

  TheWrongGirl87: yeah anything. I wish I had freedom like that. like you.

  davidgould101: be careful what you wish for, ashleigh. really.

  TheWrongGirl87: darn im not supposed to be online either, here they come TTYL

  “TheWrongGirl87 signed off at 11:04 p.m.”

  Alone again, I thought about checking my diary, but now—with something legitimate to write—I suddenly didn’t feel like it. Besides, I didn’t want to know what the other me was up to. God knows I’d hear about it soon enough.

  There’s something else you could do, I heard my brain whisper. You could call your girlfriend. It was a thought. An idea. A plan, even.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. What would I tell her? What could I possibly say?

  Get yourself together, she had told me the night before she left. For me. For both of us. How could I call her and tell her that I couldn’t even get that right. That instead of pulling myself together, I’d actually completely fallen apart?

  With the calming hum of the AC in my ears, I climbed into bed. Better to go to sleep. To prepare for whatever was to come. More than enough had happened already today. Enough for two people.

  My phone chirped from the bedside table.

  1 New Text Message From: Cath

  11:14 p.m.

  Hey creepo its on. U have a date w yourself. Tmw. lunch. Dolphin Diner on 10th. High noon. Dont be late. xoxo.

  I shut my eyes and buried my face in a pillow. Amy’s side of the bed was no longer warm, and I couldn’t smell her shampoo anywhere. It was hours before I fell asleep.

  Chapter Seven: Hello? Lunch?

  (Or: Surprise! Yourself.)

 

  Hey bitch, it’s Pedro. You screening your calls? Or do you not have to wake up in the morning now that you live a
ll alone? Ha! Like that’s stopping you. Look, dude, just wanted to say it was good seeing you out at that Fader party last night, and that chick you were with was super, super cute. Even for a fag like me. I’m glad you’re not staying cooped up—and hey, your hair looked good too. Have you been working out? That’s not me being queer; that’s a compliment! Call me.

 

  David, it’s me. It’s really strange that you haven’t called. I thought you would miss me. I miss you…. I’m on my lunch break and I’m sitting in my apartment here and I’m in another country and I feel like I’m losing you. Why won’t you call me? I don’t understand.

 

  Duuuuuude. Where the fuck are you, homes? It’s Bryce. Do you know what time it is here in the City of Angels? It’s seven in the morning, dude! I don’t wake up this early. I don’t drink smoothies and I don’t go jogging. I don’t even know what morning looks like. So why am I up? Because I just fielded a call from someone else’s girlfriend who is in Europe for Chrissakes and is worried about her boyfriend who is either in Brooklyn or in massive denial. Or in the witness protection program. What’s going on there, friend? Why is Amy calling me? Why are you calling no one? Inquiring minds, dude. What do they do? They want to know. OK. I’m going back to sleep.

 

  David! How’s my favorite MIA author? Ha, ha! It’s Thom and I—

 

 

  The Dolphin Diner was located on Tenth Avenue in Manhattan in a neighborhood that is slightly between Chelsea and the Meatpacking District—in every possible sense. It was an odd choice for a meeting place—certainly not any location I would have chosen (even though, apparently, I did). I had only ever been there twice myself, and neither time had been intentional. Once was right before moving to the city. I had come down from college to look at apartments and then gone to Penn Station to meet Amy. We had been so excited to see each other that we had walked west instead of east and ended up, hungry and exhausted, on Tenth Avenue. The other time had been a stupid night a year ago when Amy was visiting her parents in St. Louis and Bryce had convinced me to get drunk and take half of a Vicodin he had stolen from his mother’s medicine cabinet. It had felt great for about twenty minutes, during which time I had agreed to go into the city with him to some bridge-and-tunnel club on the West Side and watch him flirt with girls. But as we left the subway, I suddenly became overwhelmingly dizzy and almost blacked out on the sidewalk. He basically carried me into the Dolphin, where I had three glasses of water and then took a cab home. Good times.