Bad Habits

by Amy Gentry

  I went back for the second cart and saw Lorraine emerging from the department office, looking stricken.

  “It’s Bird,” she said.

  * * *

  The news circulated through the reception slowly, at about the rate of the tuxedoed strawberries.

  At first the roar of conversation continued almost unabated. I pushed through the crowd toward the wine table, where I saw Gwen and Connor. Lorraine hurried to Margaret’s side, standing on tiptoe to whisper in the tall woman’s ear. Margaret put her hand to her chest. Watching her from across the room, I saw rather than heard her say, “Oh dear god.” As she turned to share the news with the faculty around her, I leaned over to Gwen.

  “Someone from Bird’s family called,” I whispered. “Suicide.”

  “Oh my god.” Gwen’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes instantly glassed over with tears. Connor saw Gwen’s face and stooped to hear.

  “What happened?”

  “Bird died,” Gwen said.

  “What bird?”

  “The Bird.”

  “His name was actually Qassim.” Aka Prometheus Birdling III. I closed my eyes for a moment.

  Across the room, an unnatural hush had sprouted as the news spread in uneven patches. The students swarming the drink table set down their cups and hugged one another uncertainly. The faculty stood in silence, shaking their heads. Someone let out a sob. I looked and saw Arjun push his way out of the room, his hand clapped over his mouth. Rocky also left, with Gwen close behind him. As the shockwave spread toward the margins of the room, I found myself drifting toward the center, toward Bethany, with Connor. As if she had the answers.

  When she saw me, she said, with a perfectly professorial expression of sorrow, “What a waste. What a brilliant mind. His work was so promising.”

  “I saw him last week.” The shock stunned me out of my usual caution when speaking to her in public. “He was miserable. I should’ve—”

  “These things are overdetermined,” Bethany said, her face a mask. Standing nearby, Margaret nodded sagely, the two in agreement for once.

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means, don’t blame yourself, Mac.”

  “Why would it be Mac’s fault?” Connor said. “I’m the one who took his job.”

  “These things are overdetermined,” Bethany repeated firmly. “There is never any single cause.”

  “You don’t understand.” Connor was getting more and more upset, his face flushed an ugly red. “He sent me an email over the weekend.” He glanced at Bethany, then back at me. The room was getting quieter, and Connor’s voice rang out unnaturally loud. “He was years behind. He was on academic probation, about to miss another chapter deadline.”

  Bethany had grown white, except for a single spot of red at her throat. Her eyes stared dead ahead, as if made of wood. “These things—” she started. Then stopped.

  “As long as Bethany needed him, he knew he’d never get kicked out,” Connor said to me, as if she wasn’t there. “And then I took his place. He sent me that email, and then—” He turned to Bethany. In the same stunned tone of voice, he said, “Find a new research assistant. I quit.”

  “Come on, let’s go.” I grabbed two bottles off the wine table and put my arm around Connor protectively, herding him out.

  Behind us, I could hear the conversational economy of the buffet and bar already prevailing over the temporary pause. Cups drained in shock needed refilling. Plates of sweating cheese set down haphazardly needed replacing. The cocktail buzz of the reception was starting back up, animated by sorrow, yes, but also by curiosity. By the time Lorraine was wheeling the carts away, there would be rumors that the Bird had jumped off a rooftop, believing he could fly.

  * * *

  The texts from Bethany began flooding my phone while Connor and I walked home arm in arm, swigging from the open bottles of wine. It was just after six, and already dark.

  The first text came at 6:15. Please come tonight. I need you.

  6:20. You’ll be my new RA, of course. Already filled out the paperwork.

  9:01. I’m waiting at the farmhouse. Where are you, BQ? Did you see my note?

  9:22. They left together. I can’t be alone tonight.

  9:43. If you’re working for me you need to come NOW

  9:44. Are you getting these

  10:20. Mac, please come. I need you tonight.

  10:21. Are you still angry?

  10:23. Hurry please darling hurry

  10:50. I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m alone

  And so on. For a moment I thought of forwarding one to Tess, just to prove that Bethany was texting me at last, but Connor was crying and I was crying and I didn’t have a spare hand. Perhaps I, too, suffered from motivational impairment.

  * * *

  Connor’s apartment was dark and empty when we stumbled in from our two-bottle walk.

  The wine had gone to my head, and I already knew Connor and I were going to sleep together. We were too sad not to. And that made me even sadder. Because, although he didn’t know it yet, once I had used him in that way, I would never let it happen again. Friendship is a habit nurtured in restraint and broken recklessly in love. I was murdering our friendship, and when it was dead, I would have no desire to desecrate the corpse.

  Knowing it would only happen once, I gave myself up to it. Of all comforts, fucking was, as Bethany had pointed out, near the top of my list. After Bethany, Connor’s body felt at once tall and thin and extremely strong, and our parts, as I had suspected they would, fit together perfectly. I cared for him so much, I felt my heart break with every ragged breath. But I did not love him. At least, not that way. Not enough.

  Connor fell asleep right away, holding me like a teddy bear. I held out as long as I could, but my eyes had to close sometime. Just before they did, I had the fleeting thought: Connor had said to call him when I was over Gwen. In fact, it had been Bethany. But now I really was over her. I had let her use me long enough.

  * * *

  When Connor came out of the bedroom, his hair sticking up like a sundial, I sat at the breakfast table staring into a cup of coffee. He wore a T-shirt and an old pair of sweatpants that were comically short on him, and his sleepy eyes registered faint dismay when he saw me.

  “I was going to get up first and make omelets.” He crossed the room and huddled over me in a brief, confusing hug. When he withdrew, I clutched my coffee cup more tightly and forced a smile.

  “Knock yourself out.”

  He started pulling vegetables out of the fridge, and fifteen minutes later we were sharing one large omelet off the same plate, so that I couldn’t avoid his eyes. They reminded me of home.

  Stop it, Mac.

  He stared at me intently for a moment as he chewed.

  “So, you weren’t mad at me for taking the job with Bethany?”

  “I was never mad at you,” I said, honestly.

  “It’s just—​after I got that email from Bird, I started thinking maybe you were angling for it, too. Gwen says you’re doing an independent study with her.”

  “I’m dropping it.” I resolved to send her an email saying so as soon as I got back to my apartment. “She’s already filed my grade, but I’ll tell her to revoke it.”

  “That’s brave.” He looked down at his hands. “I know I act like nothing here matters to me, but on the inside, I’m as scared as Bird was.”

  “We all are. We’re all just trying to get a foothold, any way we can. It’s normal.”

  “Is it?” He paused. “Did I ever tell you I’m from New Orleans?” I shook my head. “We left after Katrina. But when you grow up in Louisiana, there’s always one school field trip to the fisherman’s wharf. The only thing I remember is the crab crates. They don’t want the dead ones, so, to save time, they just hang the crate right over a giant cooking pot and open up one side. The live ones make a break for freedom. They crawl all over each other trying to be the first to jump into the boiling water.”
He shuddered. “I had nightmares about it for months.”

  “Who are we supposed to be in this metaphor? The dead crabs?”

  Connor laughed. “Better to play dead in the crate together, than wind up alone on a plate.” He shook his head. “I feel so dumb, Mac. When Bethany asked me to work for her, I thought she might be tapping me for the Joyner.”

  “Why wouldn’t you think that?”

  “Because all she really wanted was a bagman,” he said miserably. “That’s what Bird was. A combination therapist and lackey. He didn’t need the money—​he had the Joyner, and I’m pretty sure his parents were loaded. All he had to do was finish the Program, but he got all wrapped up in Bethany’s world and couldn’t get out.”

  Wrapped up in Bethany’s world. The endless internet search results. The blank page. “I wonder why she fired him.”

  “Honestly? He sounded more than a little nuts in that email,” Connor said. “He was ranting about her being part of some conspiracy. A money-laundering operation, or maybe it was real estate fraud. He wanted me to look for some papers. It all sounded so paranoid, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d told me his apartment was bugged.”

  “Jesus. Could I see the email?”

  “I deleted it. Obviously, if I had known he was going to—​but I didn’t. I just wanted it out of my life.” He hung his head. “I could have helped him.”

  I stood up, pulled him to me, and stroked his hair. We were silent for a moment.

  When I let go and sat down across from him again, his eyes were red. “I don’t belong here, Mac. I don’t have the stomach for it.” He laughed weakly. “Anyway, it should have been obvious all along who was Bethany’s favorite.”

  “It should have?” Despite everything, I felt a flush rise to my cheeks.

  “I mean, right? You of all people would know. But now I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

  “Seen what?”

  “Her Joyner letter for Gwen,” he said. “It’s glowing.”

  * * *

  While Connor was taking a shower, I went through his bag. I had to see the letter for myself. I found it in the back of a notebook for Bethany’s class.

  Glowing really didn’t go far enough.

  It was incandescent.

  As I replaced the letter, I noticed the inside covers of the notebook were decorated with half-finished sketches of our classmates. I couldn’t help lingering over this fragmented portrait of the Program: an eyebrow peeking over a glasses rim, a shell-like ear with a skull earring, a hand I would have recognized anywhere, even without the delicate platinum band Gwen’s parents had given her for high school graduation. And there, of course, was Bethany—​her mouth open, lecturing, lips arrested in that peculiar grimace between praise and admonishment. It struck me that Connor must be a little in love with her, too. What else didn’t I know? Connor could draw, he was from New Orleans, he wanted the Joyner, he wanted me. I hadn’t seen any of it. No one saw anyone here. We had become mere fragments.

  The water in the shower turned off. I stuffed the whole notebook into my bag and left.

  I wanted something to remember him by.

  * * *

  The air had an electric charge that felt like snow coming soon.

  Leaving Connor’s apartment, I spotted Tess trudging toward campus, weighed down by two canvas tote bags loaded to their limit with library books. One look at her, and I knew there would be no jokes about whose apartment I was slipping out of this time; she couldn’t even see me. She stared at the ground as if determined not to take in a single extraneous piece of information.

  I intercepted her on the sidewalk. “Can I help carry those?”

  “I got it, thanks.” Her voice was gruff, and she kept her head down, the fur-trimmed hood of her parka hiding her face. “Just dropping these off at the library.”

  “I could return them for you, I’m headed that way.”

  “I don’t need anything from you. Or anyone else, for that matter.” I stepped around in front of her, blocking her path, and saw that her face was red and raw from crying.

  “Tess, what happened?”

  She looked up, eyes flashing. “What do you think happened? I’m done.”

  I was stunned. “They kicked you out?”

  “No. I’m quitting.”

  “What?”

  She put her head back down and started walking again, and I was forced to step to one side or take a bag of books to the shin. “They made it so I don’t have a choice. They put me on indefinite probation, Mac. That means they’ll always be waiting for me to fuck up. For six years. Plus, with the restraining order, I failed all my classes on attendance policy alone. They want me to repeat this semester’s coursework and provide a written apology to Margaret and the Dean and show weekly proof of psychiatric treatment from a university clinician and—​a bunch more bullshit.”

  “That’s . . . insane.”

  “I almost did it, too. That’s the worst part. Then I heard about—​you know.” She jerked her chin vaguely toward campus.

  I nodded. Bird.

  “I thought, fuck if I’m going to wind up like that guy.” Her voice had gone thick, and I looked down at my feet, giving her space. I knew she didn’t want to cry in front of me. For half a block, we walked in silence.

  She sniffed hard and continued. “What’s really grand is that it’s all in the name of helping me succeed. They’re so eager to help, they’re giving me plenty of rope to hang myself. Guess they don’t want to get caught with their hands on the noose.”

  “Tess, you have to stay and fight this,” I said. “You belong here. More than I do. More than anyone.”

  But even as I said it, I bit my tongue. I meant it. I really did. I remembered her speech about oxygen flowing toward the best ideas, not the most money. Unlike me, she had both—​good ideas and enough money to sustain herself, not to mention an enviable support network in town. If anyone deserved to make it, it was Tess. But saying the words out loud, I heard Gwen saying them to me during orientation, and for the first time felt how distant they were from any meaningful reality. They were easy words, and hollow.

  Tess’s eyes reflected their hollowness back to me. “It’s not my job to make you feel better about your place in the food chain, Mac. Just because you’re willing to put your body on the line, doesn’t mean everybody is.”

  I looked down, gut-punched. “That’s all over.”

  “Good.” But she looked skeptical.

  We walked a little further in silence.

  I tried once more. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to work.”

  “This is exactly how it’s supposed to work.”

  We had arrived at the library. We stood in front of the looming gothic entrance, with its soot-streaked gargoyles hanging over a solid bank of energy-efficient revolving doors. The book drop, a monolith in pebbled concrete, stood to our right. Tess opened its metal maw and piled the books inside, sending each load resolutely down the chute. “I’ll miss this library,” she said, taking a last look at the final stack. “That’s about all I’ll miss.”

  “Tess—​I’m sorry.”

  She slammed the book drop shut with a clang, and the books tumbled down its throat.

  “Goodbye, Mac. Keep on playing the game, I guess. And if you manage to come out on top, how you do it is strictly your business.”

  She walked away.

  I stood for a long moment watching the steady stream of students enter and leave the library through the rotating glass doors. They stared straight ahead, drained and exhausted, or looked numbly down at cell phones. Some clutched teetering stacks of books to their chests; others dragged rolling caddies that caught on every doorsill and curb. The doors turned around them all, churning and wheezing and squealing like the slowest hamster wheel in the world.

  Margaret had predicted that four of us would drop out by the end of the first year. Soo-Jeong was the first. Tess was the second. I had a feeling Connor would be the third.


  There was one more open slot.

  I was halfway to my apartment when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I glanced down and saw a text from Bethany: It’s over. No surprise there. But then I spotted a missed voice mail, buried in the avalanche of ignored calls from my mother over the past two days. It was from the Social Security office. I clicked and listened to a badly garbled message:

  “Returning your call . . . reason to suspect fraud . . . theft . . . caretaker not responding to repeated calls . . . your earliest possible convenience.”

  Fraud. Theft.

  My mother.

  There was no time to waste. I had to stop by the apartment to grab a few things. It would take at least four hours to drive home.

  December 30, 2021, 2:40 a.m.

  SkyLoft Hotel, Los Angeles

  We climb the last few flights without speaking, the only sounds the tandem huffing of our breath and the rhythmic clapping of soles on steps. My throat has gone dry from taking in big gulps of air and expelling them in explosive bursts. My thighs are burning, but I keep pumping mechanically, hanging on to my slight lead.

  Without Gwen, the past ten years have been entirely too easy. No doubt the general exodus from the Program after the accident, of which Gwen was a part, helped clear the path for my rise. But sometimes I miss the feeling that there’s someone better than me—​not just at writing and thinking, but at being and living—​standing almost beside me but just a little ahead, and taking for granted that I’m better, too. It can’t be said that Gwen’s disappearance from my life diminished my ambition, but sometimes I think it struck the killing blow to my already weak capacity for love. You can’t love other people when you hate yourself. And I never loved myself more than when I was trying to be Gwen.