The Odds of You and Me

by Cecilia Galante

  I guess I’ll never know.

  THE BREAKUP WITH Charlie happened on a Wednesday. By Saturday, the loneliness arrived like an unwelcome visitor. It was not the presence of it that bothered me so much as the uncertainty of its duration. For two days, I sat on my bed and stared at nothing. The possibility of getting a cat, just to feel another beating heart in bed next to me, raised my spirits for a few hours. But when I asked the landlord, a large Italian woman with the vague hint of a mustache across her upper lip, she frowned and threatened to evict me. “I tell you early on,” she said, her eyes wide as quarters inside her fleshy face. “When you move in. No cats. I am allergic. If I start to sneeze, you are out. Gone. Finito.”

  If Jenny had been there, I might have opened up, even though it would have taken some prodding on her part. I’d never been a girl’s girl. Never been part of the sisterhood, not even in high school, when I hung out with Tracy and the headbangers. Girls were as foreign and complex to me as boys, but boys wanted to sleep with me, which made things a little easier. As far as I could tell, most of the girls—and then later, women—I’d ever met never really articulated what it was they wanted, which left me wondering for the most part where the hell I stood with them. Jenny spent all her free time at her boyfriend’s place anyway, coming home at odd hours just to shower and check her mail. The weekend hours ticked by like days, the stretch of solitude an endless sheet of white.

  When I saw Charlie at work on Monday, my heart lifted and then sank. He gave me a few woeful glances, pausing once as I passed him in the dining room, and sighing heavily when I didn’t acknowledge him. “Man, when it rains, it pours,” he said finally, pausing as I stopped to refill an empty napkin dispenser. It was midmorning, the dining room nearly empty save for an elderly man in one corner, sipping a coffee.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My car broke down on Saturday.” I could feel him watching me for a reaction, but I pretended to struggle with the dispenser so that I didn’t have to look up.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, it sucks. The mechanic said it’s going to cost at least two grand to have it fixed, too.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah.” He paused, drawing a fingertip along one edge of the table. “I had to walk to work this morning.”

  I looked up. I walked to work every morning, too, but I lived less than a mile away. Charlie’s apartment was all the way on the other side of town, at least five or six miles from the Burger Barn. “Why didn’t you just take a bus?”

  “Have you ever been on one of the buses around here?” Charlie asked. “They’re disgusting. They smell like piss.”

  I shrugged and sidled past him with the napkin dispenser. He was trying to make me feel sorry for him and I wasn’t going to do it. The conversation had already gone on much longer than I wanted it to, and I was starting to feel uncomfortable. “I gotta go, Charlie,” I said. “Jenny and I have to get the registers ready.” I could feel his eyes on me as I walked across the room, and I knew that he would have given his left arm at that moment for me to turn around and look at him and say something, anything, to help bridge this new loneliness between us. But there had been times, I reminded myself, like the nights I sat in his window as he slept, when I’d felt lonelier with him than apart from him and that was even worse than the loneliness I felt now. This I could do, no matter how difficult it felt at certain moments. I avoided him for the rest of the day, even eating lunch in the bathroom so that he would not have the opportunity to talk to me again, and ducking out early without saying goodbye.

  IT WAS GETTING late, already past nine, when the knock on my door sounded. I’d changed into my sleep sweats and favorite AC/DC T-shirt, and was getting ready to tuck into a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream while I looked through the Help Wanted section of the newspaper. It just made more sense, I decided, to extricate myself completely from the situation. Finding another job wouldn’t be so hard, and the physical distance it provided would be the best thing for both of us.

  I looked up in alarm as the knock sounded again, louder this time. No one ever came to my apartment, except maybe Ma, who stopped by every so often to make sure I was still alive. She would bring a ziti casserole with her, look around the place disdainfully, and then leave again. Besides, it was much too late for her to be coming around. She always came on weekend mornings, when she didn’t have work. The knock sounded a third time, demanding, insistent. I put down the bowl of ice cream and went to the door. “Who is it?”

  There was a deep intake of breath, and then a soft, liquor-laced voice. “Bird, it’s me. Charlie. Let me in. I need to talk to you.”

  I pressed my forehead against the door. I could already tell by the sound of his voice that he was drunk. Anything that he said right now would hold little or no merit, if anything at all. And yet.

  “How’d you get here?” I asked. “I thought you said your car broke down.”

  “I took the bus, Bird. I had to see you.”

  I closed my eyes again, fought against the faint little voice that swayed a little, knowing this tiny sacrifice he’d made for me.

  “I just want to tell you how sorry I am for the way I acted.” He spoke more quickly now, as if sensing my hesitancy. “In my office that day, when you told me you were breaking up with me, I totally overstepped my bounds, and I’m so sorry, baby.” His voice cracked around the edges. “I really am. I’ll never do anything like that again.”

  In all the time we’d spent together, Charlie had never apologized for anything. And he had never called me “baby.” Not once. I liked the way it sounded. I liked the way it made me feel. Desired. Singular. I opened the door. The sour smell of beer hit me in the face as he stepped inside and gave me a quick once-over. “Wow,” he said slowly. “You look great.”

  “I’m in my pajamas, Charlie.” I eyed him warily, already realizing my mistake. I knew he was drunk, but his eyes were too bright, too, as if he’d just woken up from a bad dream. Or snorted a line of cocaine, which he’d admitted to doing on occasion.

  “You look great in anything,” he said. “You’re gorgeous, Bird.” His mouth moved awkwardly around the word “gorgeous,” slurring the g’s and the s. His blue dress shirt hung loosely outside his pants and the sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, exposing a thin gold chain around his right wrist. He stepped forward and touched my cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I really am sorry,” he started. “You know that, right?”

  “Charlie, listen,” I said, moving my head away from his hand. “You’re drunk. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep? Let’s talk about this another time. Tomorrow, okay?”

  He reached out again and ran his hand through my hair, watching dumbly as the strands fell between his fingers. “How about you let me sleep here? Jenny won’t be coming back tonight, will she? Didn’t you tell me she usually stays over at her boyfriend’s?”

  “Charlie, no.” I stepped back so that his hand dropped heavily to his side. “You should go. I mean it. This is not a good time.”

  “It’s always a good time,” he tried again. “Come on, baby, don’t you want me?”

  For a split second, I thought about entertaining his request. About letting him bring me to bed and do his thing and then leave. It would take five minutes, ten tops. I’d have a warm body to press up against, salty skin to kiss, to brush my lips against. I could close my eyes and pretend it was anyone else. And then he’d be gone. I’d have the rest of my night to myself. But as I looked at him, standing there before me with his hooded eyes and one bad tooth, my skin began to crawl. For as much as I craved the physical contact, I knew I didn’t want to spend five more seconds with this guy, let alone five minutes. And I certainly did not want to spend any of it naked.

  I walked past him and opened the door. With one hand on the knob and the other hand on my hip, I stood there, waiting. He looked at me quizzically and then guffawed. “Come on, Bird.”

  “Get out.” My voice was as firm as it
had ever been with him. “I mean it.”

  “Get out?” He drew his head back, as if I had just spit at him. “Get out?”

  My fingers gripped the doorknob more tightly.

  He took a step toward me. “What’d I tell you about talking to me like that?”

  “Leave, Charlie.”

  He was on me before I knew what was happening, dragging me down the hall by my hair with one hand, bending the fingers of my opposite hand with the other. There was a terrifying, inhuman strength about him that made me realize what he was going to do before it happened, but I struggled anyway, pleading with him to stop. I got a good slice in his right cheek with one of my nails before he threw me down, pinning my arms with both of his knees, nearly crushing my elbows into the floor. “You want me to get out?” he hissed above me. “Huh? You want me out, baby?” His eyes were black and spit flew out of his mouth. “Here, look. I’ll take it out.” He reached inside his pants and withdrew his penis, shoving it against my face. It was warm and flaccid, a thick, disgusting slug. His knees were still digging into the soft spot beneath my elbows and I turned my face, nearly gasping from the pain.

  “Charlie, please!”

  “Oh, it’s ‘please’ now, huh? ‘Please, Charlie’?” He shifted slightly, so that his penis rubbed against my neck, under my chin, and then bucked his hips so that it slid wildly against the side of my face. He was getting harder, the edges of him growing stiff and rigid.

  “Charlie.” I began to cry. “Stop.”

  “Say ‘please’ again.” He leaned down and grabbed my face around the jaw, aligning my eyes with his. He was still thrusting, and the tip of his penis moved against the edge of my lips, the eye of it soft and salty and wet. “Come on, say ‘please, Charlie.’”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, hating the heat and stink of him against my mouth, the pain of his fingers digging into my jaw, the strength of his knees burying my elbows farther and farther into the wood, but most of all hating the helplessness of my body under his. “Fuck you!” I screamed.

  For a split second, Charlie looked startled and then his face broke open into a wide, sloppy grin. “Fuck you?” he repeated. “Oh, baby. I thought you’d never ask.” He moved his knees off my arms awkwardly, heavily, and straddled my hips. The sudden release of the pressure against my elbows and the new, throbbing pain in its wake was so intense that, for a moment, all my focus shifted to that part of my body. Then a sudden coldness as my bare flesh rubbed against the floor, and the realization of what was coming next. I began to kick as Charlie tore my sweat pants down, but the movement was futile; his weight was centered squarely along my abdomen. I shut my eyes as he ripped at my underwear. The waistband, thin and stretched with use, tore easily in his hands, and he laughed as he snatched at it again, this time splitting the crotch. I arched my back and reached for his face with both my hands, fully intending to make contact with his eyeballs. But he grabbed my flailing right hand with his and bent it all the way back. I screamed in pain and kept screaming as he forced his way inside of me. He jammed and pushed, over and over again, each time a little harder, and it hurt, but not unbearably, and I remember thinking later that maybe it hadn’t really happened at all because of that fact.

  And then suddenly, like a miracle, he was being lifted off me. I thought for a split second that maybe God Himself had reached down and plucked him off, thrown him like some sort of crushed insect into the corner of my room. Except that it wasn’t God. It was James who was lifting Charlie by both shoulders and slamming him into my bedroom wall. There was the sound of animal grunting and shoving, and then Charlie swung blindly, somehow making contact, and sent James reeling backward across the room. A faint whooshing sound followed, as Charlie pulled a can of Mace out of his pocket and began spraying wildly. James yelled and fell back down again, and before I knew what had happened, Charlie had run down the hallway and disappeared out the door.

  James stumbled past me and made his way toward my kitchen. I listened, barely breathing, as water rushed into the sink, followed by the sounds of splashing and James grunting for what seemed like hours. And in those hours I remember thinking only one thing: that Ma had been right about Charlie from the very beginning. He had been hiding something behind those eyes that wouldn’t look at her. Something terrible. How hadn’t I seen it? How had she?

  I clutched a handful of blanket against me as the running water finally ceased, and listened wide-eyed as James’s footsteps sounded in the hallway. He would leave now. I was sure of it. But his footsteps got closer. And then closer still, until the outline of him appeared in my doorway, filling it almost entirely. I scurried back along the floor until I was pressed up against the side of my bed, still clutching the blankets around me. Beneath them, my sweats were still down around my ankles; the space between my legs was raw and throbbing. Somehow, amid the struggle, the curtain on my window had been torn down and the unforgiving glare of a streetlight bled its way into my room.

  “Bird?” James’s voice floated through the dark. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” The word fluttered out of my throat, hovering there like an injured butterfly. James took several steps until he was just a few feet away from the bed. I turned my head to the wall, unable to look at him.

  “Can I . . . ?” I heard him say. “Is it all right . . . to sit . . . ?”

  I did not answer, did not even move, and thankfully, neither did he. The air in the room was heavy with the smell of cum and skin and beer. My elbows pulsed painfully from where Charlie had knelt on them; the skin on the rest of my body felt as tender as a pincushion.

  “Bird,” James said after a moment. “You have to call the police.”

  I thought about this for a moment, thought about the impending scenes that would arise between Charlie and me, Ma and me—and shook my head.

  “No, no, you have to,” James said. “Right now, Bird. I mean it. You can’t let that prick get away with what he just did to you.”

  I turned my head from the wall. It felt like a thousand pounds. Even the space behind my eyes was heavy, as if someone opened up the top of my skull and dropped an anvil inside. Just for a moment, I pictured my heart—which was beating irregularly as if trying to keep up with the fractured rest of me—as a shred of pulsing raw ribbon, and I knew that it would never be the same again. “Get out,” I said quietly.

  James stared at me for a moment. The white scar along his eyebrow seemed to glow faintly in the dark, and beneath his right eye the skin was beginning to swell. “Bird,” he started.

  “Get out!” My voice was louder. “Get out, get out, get out! Before I call the police and tell them it was you!”

  James took a step back then, the concern in his eyes turning to alarm. “Bird,” he tried again. “The only reason I was here was . . .” He stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished. “I was just trying—”

  I threw the pillow I hadn’t realized I’d been clutching. I rose to my knees, letting the blankets drop, not caring that my lower half was bare and exposed, and swayed, bruised and light-headed, clenching my fists. “Get out!” I screamed. “Now!”

  James left.

  It was the last time I ever saw him—or Charlie—again.

  UNTIL NOW.

  Something drops out of my eye, splashing against the heel of my boot before I realize that I am crying. Fuck. I snatch at my eyes impatiently, press the heels of my palms against my eyelids. I haven’t thought about that night, haven’t let myself walk through all the horrible steps of it—from start to finish—in years. Maybe not since it happened.

  Why would I ever want to go back there? What would be the point? What’s done was done. It didn’t kill me. Finding out I was pregnant afterward—and that it was from that night, the only night Charlie had ever not used a condom—didn’t even do me in. Yes, the baby had been forced into me. Yes, it would be half his, a thought which troubled me less and less as more time went by without a sign of him. But I would also have someone in my life now who loved m
e like no one else could. Or ever would again. And that is how I got through it. That is how I will continue to get through it. Goddamn it.

  I take a deep breath, get up to leave.

  And then, suddenly, I hear it. A breathing in and out, so faint at first that I wonder if it is just mine. I pick my head back up, hold my breath, and lean toward the sound, which seems, inexplicably, to be coming from near the organ. Which is impossible, since no one’s there. I scoot forward, straining to listen. Someone’s definitely breathing.

  And this time, I realize slowly, it’s coming from inside the organ.

  Chapter 20

  I lean back, examining the wooden contraption in front of me. That’s when I see the left side of the enormous instrument, lopsided and just slightly ajar. It almost looks like a door of some kind minus the knob.

  I put my lips to the corner, where the jutted side meets one of the legs, and whisper, “James? Are you in there?”

  Somewhere inside the organ, the breathing halts.

  “James, it’s Bird. I’m back. With more water.”

  Downstairs, there is a sudden slug of movement as a few people stand up and start walking toward the vestibule. I lean into the corner of the organ again, pressing my lips tightly together, as if muting any future sounds that might come out of them. The swing of doors is followed by a low murmuring as pleasantries are exchanged, afternoon details discussed. I close my eyes. Finally, there is the sound of the outside doors. Opening. And then closing. I exhale.