Sliding Past Vertical

by Laurie Boris

  I’m not helpless. Sarah sniffed back tears. And Emerson couldn’t change his past by trying to shape her decisions. He had no right to tell her that anyone in her life didn’t deserve whatever she wanted to give, right or wrong.

  Chapter 6

  Floating on the edge of sleep, Sarah dreamed about her father. He sat at the end of her bed, his hands gripping the domes of his knees. His brown socks matched his tie; his sour face was freshly shaved and splashed with the Old Spice she’d bought him for Father’s Day, twenty years ago. She pretended not to notice him, because she knew what came next.

  “Don’t you think it would make sense to start looking for a job?”

  He sounded like he was trying to sell her an insurance policy. “Yeah, yeah, I will.” She turned over. “Tomorrow.”

  “You said that yesterday. And the day before and the day before and the day before.”

  His tone sounded noticeably sharper. So did Sarah’s. “I’ll do it, okay? Get off my back.”

  “Yeah, okay, fine. But you’re gonna have to do something to pay your half of the fucking rent. ’Cause I can’t cover you next month, too.”

  He couldn’t talk to her like that. And what was the deal about rent? He sold enough policies to take his girlfriend to Bermuda—a girl half his age with expensive taste, which could explain why he needed the money. “You don’t have to,” she said. “I’m moving in with Mom.”

  The laugh that followed was not her father’s. Sarah woke up.

  “Your mother? The country club ice queen?” Dee Dee, in her nurse’s scrubs, sat cross-legged at the foot of Sarah’s futon. “Yeah, that’ll last a week.”

  “Don’t you have to go stick needles in people?” Sarah tried to tug the covers out from under her roommate’s ass.

  Dee Dee resisted. “I got a few minutes.”

  “To make my life miserable.”

  “I’m just trying to help.” She tied back her hair with a series of fluffy looking, fabric-covered elastics. “You oversleep. You don’t go out. You look like shit.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “All right, you’re not so bad. But you’re obviously in denial or having some kind of clinical depression or something.”

  “And I suppose you have a program for that.”

  The hospital where Dee Dee worked had a program for everything: codependency, chronic lateness, nail biting. Sarah needed only to mention she was having a problem and there would be a pamphlet for the appropriate twelve-step program waiting for her next to the coffeemaker in the morning.

  “As a matter of fact…”

  “Don’t waste time telling me about it. I’ll read the literature after you go.”

  “No, this one’s really good. It’s a support group for job seekers…”

  “So I can sit around and compare unemployment checks with other losers? Oh, I forgot. I’m not eligible for unemployment because it doesn’t cover acts of stupidity.” Sarah pulled the covers over her head.

  “And did I also mention that your attitude sucks?” Dee Dee had a smile in her voice.

  “I don’t have much to be happy about at the moment,” Sarah said from the cocoon of the polyester blanket she’d bought on sale at K-Mart. “I burned down the Copy King. I’m flat broke, and my boyfriend’s in rehab.”

  “But he’s back!” Dee Dee bounced up off the futon. “Maybe you can borrow some money from him until you get a job.”

  Sarah shot upright. “He’s back?”

  Dee Dee rearranged her snug white pants and the tunic top that probably should have been a few inches longer. “He didn’t call you?”

  “No.” She puffed out indignation. “You saw him?”

  “Yeah. Couple days ago, at the hospital. He came in about a program, to follow up on the rehab, I guess. He looked really good. I gave him a pamphlet. See, at least he knows he has a problem.”

  As Dee Dee scampered off, Sarah blinked, her mind catching up. Jay had left rehab? Was he all right? And he’d been back in town for two days, at least, without calling her?

  “I’ll give him a problem,” Sarah muttered.

  She didn’t drag herself out of bed, though, until she heard Dee Dee close and lock the front door. While stagnant, the air still felt relatively cool, but it wouldn’t be for long. She knew the routine; she’d essentially been living the same day for the past week and a half. It would always start badly. Her head would throb. Dee Dee would bounce off to the hospital. A glimmer of drive and initiative gathered momentum after her second cup of coffee. She’d think about getting a newspaper or calling about freelance work. Then the sun beat against the windows, and despite the drawn blinds, it would turn their second-story apartment into a blast furnace, and whatever positive energy she’d been able to muster got baked right out of her.

  Then it started all over again. She was almost grateful to be angry with Jay just for the break in her routine.

  That morning, resting against the coffee pot was a hospital pamphlet titled People Who Need People. Sarah tossed it into the trash and watched with satisfaction as a corner sucked bitter coffee from a filter full of wet grounds.

  * * * * *

  After her first cup, Sarah felt sufficiently fortified to handle Jay. Not that she was expecting to speak with him. He screened his calls. She waited through one ring, two, three. The sound resonated deep in her body. So many times she’d tried to hear past that ring, hear through the echo at the end, wondering if he was home, if he was safe, if he was even alive. Sometimes the deepest chasm in the world was the space between those rings, the pause between the words on his outgoing message, the long stretch of dead air between his last syllable and the beep. Sometimes after the beep she went still and listened. As if he were home and she could hear him breathing. Making coffee. Playing his guitar.

  “I hate answering machines,” Emerson once told her, in his defense for refusing to buy one and for his reluctance to leave messages on hers. “They’re supposed to help people communicate, but they do a better job at keeping them apart.”

  Five rings. Jay answered. His voice sounded strained, out of breath.

  “So you are back,” Sarah said.

  In the long pause that followed, she could almost hear him making up excuses.

  “I was going to call you.”

  She shook her head. That was the limit of his creativity?

  “Yeah, after I was done practicing.” He plunked on his guitar. “So, baby,” he began, in his stage voice. “How’ve you been?”

  “How’ve I been? I’m not the one who’s supposed to be in rehab for two more weeks.”

  The guitar stopped. He let out a long breath. “I couldn’t stay in that place.”

  She closed her eyes, waiting for the rest of it.

  “They wouldn’t let me play my guitar,” he said. “They got all weirded out, said it bothered the other patients. If they don’t get that I need this to get by, screw ’em.” As if to punctuate his need, he strummed a few chords. “I’ve been on a wild-ass tear since I got home. Here, listen to this, tell me what you think.”

  It wasn’t bad. His voice and the image of his hands stroking the guitar pulled at her in places she didn’t want to be pulled at. She reminded herself to be mad at him.

  “So that’s it. You’re just giving up on getting better?”

  He was humming in a soft purr. “Naw. I want to get better. I want to stop using. I just can’t do it in some kind of rarefied atmosphere. I gotta be able to cut it in real life. Where I have my music.” The pause was just long enough. “And you.”

  She listened for a while, evaluating his sincerity, lulled by his melodies.

  “So what’s the deal,” he said, so softly it was like part of the song. “I’m gone a week and some guy’s sending you flowers?”

  “What?”

  “Nurse Dee Dee had some at her station. She told me where they came from.”

  She’d let Dee Dee take a few roses to work, out of the new batch Em had sent after the fire. She i
magined the previous dozen in ashes, scattered about the chipped and probably melted crystal vase. “Oh. They’re from Emerson.”

  “Porn Boy’s still sniffing around?”

  “We’re just friends. And stop calling him that.”

  “Yeah, uh-huh, okay. But if it quacks like a duck, it probably ain’t a chicken.”

  “He only writes that stuff for the money,” Sarah said.

  “If he was a real writer—”

  “Spare me the tortured artist routine, okay?”

  He laughed and had another go at the guitar. Despite herself, she imagined his nimble fingers on the trembling strings, and she ached to be touched the same way.

  “Here,” he said. “I wrote this one for you. To tell you I’m sorry.”

  * * * * *

  Jay brought Chinese takeout. Pleased that he’d chosen her favorite dishes, she smiled as he arranged the spread picnic style on a tablecloth on the floor of her room. “You remembered.”

  Grinning back shyly, he sat next to her on the futon and shrugged a shoulder. “Had a little time to think out there. I remembered something else you like, too.”

  Her gaze held his, and more of her anger began to melt. Lunch forgotten, he slid a hand over her knee and leaned to kiss her, his lips first brushing hers as if to ask permission. Like you don’t already know the answer, she thought, letting him ease her onto the mattress.

  Jay made love the way some men send flowers. The guiltier he felt, the more orgasms he’d give her. He made sure Sarah had three before succumbing to his own. He started for four, but she stopped him by pleading starvation. He rolled off her and passed the potstickers. Then he grabbed chopsticks and one of the containers. Jay dropped bits of mu shu pork on her breasts and licked them clean, like something out of a porno film or one of Emerson’s stories. Still part of the apology, perhaps? Or maybe he thought he was being creative, competing with the sort of lover he imagined Emerson to have been.

  Emerson had never dripped food on her. He’d been more than content to take her ungarnished.

  A sudden wave of irritation spilled over her. “Cut it out,” she snapped. The soy sauce stung. His stubble didn’t help. She felt like an art film photographer’s model, or something that would be on one of Jay’s future album covers. Female Buffet. Smorgasbroad.

  “You don’t like anyone eating mu shu off you?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Maybe I’ll write a song about it.”

  “You do that.”

  “Someone needs more attitude adjustment.” He grinned at her, put down the food, and stroked her thigh.

  “Jay…”

  He was on her again.

  “Jay…” She cupped a hand on each shoulder. “Enough, all right?”

  He backed down but gave her one last glance just in case. “You sure?”

  “Yes, I forgive you, okay?”

  “I wasn’t trying to…”

  “Yes. You were.”

  He rolled onto his back, blowing out a puff of air. “Modus operandi of your basic insecure male,” he said. “Letting my dick speak for me.”

  “Maybe you should write a song about that.” Leaning toward the spread for a bite of eggroll, she caught a glimpse of her clock and gasped. The appointment! She threw herself out of bed, not an easy task when bed was a futon on the floor, and rescued her underpants from the dying ficus tree where he had flung them earlier.

  Jay’s head lolled over. He sleepily watched her tug up her panties, pick a yellowed leaf from the waistband, and grope underneath a pile of his clothing for her bra. “Going somewhere, baby?”

  “I’ve got to see this detective what’s-his-name about the fire.” And there was no time for a shower, so she had to go file a police statement smelling like mu shu pork and rock star.

  He blinked stupidly at her, raising himself on one elbow. “What fire?”

  Dee Dee thought to tell him about the roses but not the fire? “The Copy King burned down.”

  “Bummer.” He yawned. Then he bolted up, color draining from his face. “Wait a minute. The cops are coming here?”

  Sarah eyed him warily. “No, I’m meeting him at the station in Brookline Village.” He looked only slightly relieved. “Can you give me a ride? It’s a pain in the ass getting there on the T.”

  He untangled himself from the sheets. “I, um, I got an audition…”

  “I thought that wasn’t until four. It’s only two thirty.”

  He reached for his clothes, sorted them out and yanked them on haphazardly. “Yeah, but I gotta go home first. Shower, shave, get my guitar and stuff…”

  She blinked at him. “But the station’s practically on the way.”

  He gave her an exasperated look.

  “Fine.” A lump tightened in Sarah’s throat. “I’ll get there on my own. I just didn’t see the big deal about—”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll take you. But don’t expect me to wait around.”

  “I don’t. You can just drop me and I’ll get home myself. You don’t even have to shut off the engine.” She whipped a brush through her hair. “Hell, why even stop? I’ll jump out the window while you’re rolling past.”

  “Sarah…”

  Oh, my God. No. Not again. She stopped brushing and wheeled around to face him. “Do you have something you don’t want the police to see?”

  He tied the lace of his left sneaker.

  “Huh? Is that it?”

  He began on the right. Sarah’s mouth tensed, as did her grip on the brush.

  “I’m holding for someone,” he said finally, not looking at her.

  She could have smacked him. “So much for wanting to get better.”

  “It’s not much.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m not doing any of it.”

  A couple of weeks ago, she would have believed him. And the next morning he’d be calling her, with a vicious hangover, asking if she could bring him orange juice and aspirin. Pretty please, baby?

  “Look, I just picked it up. It’s down in my car…”

  “In your car?”

  Dee Dee’s parakeet squealed. Sarah lowered her voice, as if it cared what she said. “The way you drive? You could get pulled over and…”

  “It’s safer than my apartment. I’ve been robbed twice.”

  She stared at him. Potstickers congealed into a nasty lump in her stomach.

  “What I was trying to say was that it’s locked in my glove compartment and I have to give it to the guy tomorrow. Maybe I could bring it up and you could, you know, keep it safe for me until then?”

  Her eyebrows flew up. At least he had the sense to look embarrassed about the request. “No. No way. You’re not bringing that stuff in here.”

  “But if it’s out of my hands I won’t be tempted.”

  “You should have thought of that when you decided to get it.”

  He pulled in a long breath and let it out slowly, looking a lot less cavalier than he’d been a few minutes ago. “It’s too late for that. The guy already paid me and I already got the stuff.” He picked at a thumbnail, his hands between his knees. He looked up at her, not with the fake sad eyes but with genuine fear and humility. “I thought…” He swallowed and when he spoke again, his voice cracked a little. “I thought it would be okay. I don’t know. Maybe…maybe I wanted to test myself. See if I could still deal and not do any of it while I’m holding. It’s like, my first step toward getting better in the real world.”

  Sarah sighed, gazing down at him. She stroked a lock of his unruly hair back into place. At least she should be thankful to be having this conversation with him before he’d done it, rather than after. Still holding her brush, she flopped down next to him and said softly, “If you don’t want to do the stuff, don’t you think it would make it a lot easier if you didn’t have it around?”

  “You’re right.” He turned toward her with a small, charming smile. “It is a lot of money though.”

  She shrugged. “You
could give it back.”

  He snorted a laugh. “You don’t give it back, Sarah.”

  “Why? Is that considered poor drug dealer etiquette?”

  She’d meant it as a joke, but he was serious and had a bit of a panicked look in his eyes. “You don’t give it back. You get the goods and you deliver. And if you don’t deliver…” He made an ominous slash across his throat. “You saw my windshield after I pissed the last guy off. Maybe next time it could be me.”

  “All right.” Sarah squeezed her eyes shut, instantly regretting the decision. “You can keep it here.”

  Jay opened his mouth to speak but she stopped him, waving the hairbrush. “But only until tomorrow and only this once, okay?” He nodded. “And you’re going to Dee Dee’s program.”

  “Okay,” he said, eyes melting at her. “Thanks. Really. I mean it.”

  She grunted a response as he ran out with his car keys. Three crimes in two weeks, she thought. Collusion in a possible insurance scheme and now, aiding and abetting a drug dealer, and possession. Plus someone should give me the Codependent Girlfriend of the Year award. In her head she heard Emerson scolding her, saying that it’s possible sometimes to be too damned nice.

  And he should know.

  Chapter 7

  Running out of luck and money, Sarah took a freelance job near Bunker Hill in Charlestown. The pay for three days’ work, laying out and pasting up a monthly real estate magazine, was insulting, but it would be enough to get Dee Dee off her back. Combined with what she had left from her final paycheck, she wouldn’t have to borrow from Emerson or her parents for the month’s expenses.