Milkrun

by Sarah Mlynowski

  It would be really wrong if I searched through his drawer to investigate the matter further. Really wrong. Morally wrong. Legally wrong.

  Hmm. I can still hear the pounding of the water against the tiles.

  I open the drawer and take out the box. Let’s see. It says on the package there should be twelve condoms inside. And the box is in perfect shape—meaning that there’s no way it was anywhere near a backpack. So he didn’t take it back with him from Thailand. It could have been a new box, mind you, and he could have opened it just after I called. In expectation. In eagerness. I’ll buy that. But there had better be eleven in there, since we used one. Let’s see. Four. There are four condoms left. Four? Only four? Is there a secret compartment? Like the spare tank in your car when your gauge says empty? Why are there only four? Where are the missing seven?

  More importantly, where were they?

  The water stops and I frantically return the box and the pictures to their original homes.

  Seven. He’s had sex seven times in the last two weeks. His vacation sex I’m prepared to forget about. But New York sex?

  I am having difficulty processing this information.

  When he walks back into the room, I’m sitting cross-legged on his bed. The lower half of his body is wrapped in a black towel. The wet tips of his hair fall in front of his eyes. He is so cute wet. Very distracting.

  “I’m starving,” he says.

  I pull him back to bed. “What do you want to do for dinner?” I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt—for now. He could have bought the box months ago, intending to bring it to Thailand, but at the last moment decided to take only seven condoms.

  “Actually…”

  Yes? Order in? Dine out? He rests the back of his head against my knee. “I have this Christmas Eve dinner thing tonight,” he says.

  “Oh.” That sucks. I guess I’m going to make Wendy take the whole day off from work, after all. “You can’t get out of it?”

  “Unfortunately, no. You didn’t tell me you were coming in.” I watch as his eyes change from blue to gray. They do that sometimes, depending on the light. “If you had given me some sort of notice, I would have been able to take you.”

  Excuse me? A look of death must be clouding across my face because I sense him tensing up. Or maybe he’s tensing up because he realizes what he’s just said and knows he’s busted.

  “You’re taking someone else.” This is not a question.

  “I…”

  I just slept with him and now he has a date. I just slept with him and now he has a date. Tonight. After I slept with him. I shove his head off my knee. “Who? Who’s your date?”

  He pauses. Again. “Jackie, I don’t think you want to know.”

  Omigod. I know. I know who it is. “Are you dating Crystal Werner?”

  Another pause. This man sure takes a lot of pauses when he’s being busted.

  “You’re dating Crystal.” I’m going to kill myself. Did he always like her? Did he like her while he was dating me? Was he just waiting for her to break up with her boyfriend? Was I just the bed warmer? “Good for you, guys. I hope you two have a long and happy life together.”

  He laughs. I can’t believe he laughs. I’m contemplating suicide and he’s laughing. “It’s not serious. It’s really casual. We don’t want to get too attached to each other. I’m moving to Boston in a week, remember?”

  No, I do not remember. He never did give me a date as to when he was coming. And what does he mean by “we”? Is he saying that he would have considered getting serious with her if he weren’t moving to Boston? Which makes me now wonder about our whole relationship. Did he sleep with other girls when we were together and tell them that we weren’t serious, that we were only casual, because he was going to Thailand?

  If he cared about me, even a little, he would not have done this. He would not have started up with Crystal. He would not have started up with anyone, in Thailand or elsewhere. He would not have made me an afterthought, an if-nothing-else-works-out-there’s-always-Jackie kind of girl.

  I have to get out of this apartment immediately. If I stay here a moment longer, I might explode—and I mean into actual physical pieces, not verbally. Where are my clothes? Where are my damn clothes? I hate him. I really hate him. I hope he dies. I hope he dies an excruciatingly painful death. Like getting eaten by a shark. While still conscious. Or being burned to death, but not passing out from the smoke. I wish I had one of those sock puppet voodoo dolls. I know exactly where I’d prick him.

  As I step back into my skirt and boots (I would put on the comfy clothes that are in the knapsack, but I don’t want him to know I dressed up for him), I feel him watching me. I ignore his gaze. “Have a merry Crystal Christmas,” I say and slam the apartment door behind me. I am not going to cry. I will not let him matter that much to me. I will not cry. He is not worth it. Raindrops on roses? Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes?

  I walk into the closest grocery store and ask the woman behind the counter where the nearest phone is. She points me to a phone booth near the fridge at the back of her store. I need to speak to Wendy.

  “Hi,” she says. “So are you staying at Jeremy’s?”

  “No. I want to go back to Bubbe Hannah’s.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” I answer, my voice shaking. I won’t cry. I can’t cry. I cannot start sobbing while the grocery woman is watching me while she stocks the fridge with milk cartons.

  “What happened?”

  “He’s dating Crystal Werner.” I am not going to cry in a grocery store. I am crying in a grocery store. The grocery woman passes me a tissue.

  “It’s okay,” she says soothingly (Wendy, not the grocery woman). “He’s an ass. Nothing new.”

  “I know.” The tears are now running freely down the sides of my face. “So why am I surprised? It’s not as if he’s inconsistent.”

  She tells me to stay where I am. She’s coming to pick me up in a cab in half an hour.

  I wander around the store for five minutes, buy a chocolate bar, and then decide to try Sam’s cell.

  “Jack! How’s New York?”

  “Horrible. I hate this place. When will you be home?”

  “Day after tomorrow. The twenty-sixth. What happened with Jer?”

  I don’t feel like revisiting the experience just yet. “Me, too. I’m coming home.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be coming back on the twenty-eighth?”

  “I’m coming home early. I don’t want to talk about it. Tell me about Florida.”

  “I met the cutest lifeguard at the pool!” she exclaims excitedly, and goes on to describe all the men she’s met.

  Twenty minutes later (good thing I memorized my dad’s calling card number way back when), I see a yellow cab pull up outside the store. I hang up in the middle of some story about mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and, sobbing, join Wendy in the backseat.

  We order kosher Chinese food for dinner (Bubbe Hannah wants to join us) and rent Love Story, Titanic, The Other Side of the Mountain and Madame X. I’m in the mood for a good cry.

  “Jim called,” Bubbe Hannah says.

  “Jim?” I ask.

  “Who’s Jim?” Wendy asks.

  “Not for you. It was a boy for Jackie. A boy didn’t call for you. Unfortunately.”

  Wendy rolls her eyes. “Do you mean Tim?”

  “Yes, Tim. I thought your boyfriend had another name. But I’m old. I forget.”

  “You’re not old, Bubbe. You’re chronologically challenged.” Wendy pecks her grandmother on the cheek. “What did he say?”

  “To call him.”

  So not happening.

  “I have a Hanukkah present for you,” I tell Wendy the next day. It’s Christmas morning. I pull the present I purchased for her yesterday out of my bag. It’s not wrapped or anything, and there’s no card, but still, it’s a present.

  “
You didn’t have to buy me a Hanukkah present. Friends don’t exchange presents on Hanukkah. Anyway, I’ve known you for over fifteen years, and you never bought me a Hanukkah present before.”

  “I know, but I wanted to.” I hand her a copy of Let’s Go Guide to Europe. “To inspire you.”

  “This is fantastic,” she says flipping through it. “Oooh…Italy. One day for sure, I’m going to Italy.”

  “I wouldn’t care where I went,” I tell her, “as long as I don’t ever have to come to New York again.” I hate New York. Maybe I’ll create a new line of hats and T-shirts with that logo.

  “I have a present for you, too,” Wendy says.

  “You do?” Yay! A present! She hands me a box wrapped in shiny, green paper, tied with a swirled pink ribbon. She’s included a card, one of those text-free ones with a pretty scenic picture of a couple holding hands next to a large Christmas tree—obviously purchased before the calamity. Inside, she wrote, “Happy holidays to a wonderful best friend. You are strong, brilliant, and beautiful. Anyone who doesn’t realize this immediately does not deserve to be in your presence.” I assume this was written after. I sniffle.

  Under the wrapping paper is a Bloomingdale’s box with two pairs of identical fuzzy gray gloves.

  “They’re gorgeous!” I tell her. They really are. “But why two pairs?”

  “You are to immediately place the second pair in a safekeeping drawer. They are for when you lose the first pair.”

  So clever, that Wendy. How could I ask for a better friend? Someone who gives me a backup plan.

  Instead of someone who makes me the backup plan.

  15

  The Milkrun—Literally

  I’M READING IN CITY GIRLS ABOUT how to lose those extra five Christmas pounds when the lights in the train go out and sparks start flying by my window. They kind of look like the tail of firecrackers before they explode. Then the window turns black and the train comes to a stop. Someone turns on a flashlight, and in the dim light I make out the silhouette of the woman sitting next to me. She’s eating a ham and cheese sandwich. Instead of putting the sandwich down, which is what most people would do under the circumstances, she continues eating. What kind of person continues eating when the train might be exploding? Say you have one more minute of life—do you finish your sandwich? I, on the other hand, choose to reflect. Not on my own life, mind you, but on the eating habits of the woman sitting next to me.

  We’d better not be stopped for long. I’ve already spent far too much time on this train, which for some reason, has taken the most convoluted route from New York to Boston. Hmm. What’s the fastest way to get from A to B? I know, take a side trip to C, stop a little at F, and then pop over to U. Ridiculous.

  My head hurts. I shouldn’t have been reading without my contacts. I took them out as soon as I sat down on the train because I figured I’d take a nap to try avoid thinking about the misery of Christmas, and I hate napping with my contacts in because then I wake up with dry and sticky lenses. I should get that eye laser surgery, but it probably costs more than I make in a year. An image of a peeled mandarin springs into my mind every time I think of it. I don’t like mandarins, especially when they remind me of eyes.

  Suddenly everyone around me begins whispering and laughing nervously. More flashlights are turned on, and I squint and look around. An old woman donning a round hair-sprayed nest is standing up on her seat. She appears to be wearing a long red raincoat, and in my contact-less vision looks like the devil getting ready to flash. In the row behind her, a man wearing a gray and black checkered suit stands up, too. “I’m a lifeguard,” he says. “Does anyone needs assistance?”

  Why, is someone drowning? Weirdo. Two kids across the aisle from him apparently also find this declaration amusing, because they start to flap their arms up and down in their seats as if performing some kind of ritual dance, something that reminds me of what Dad nostalgically refers to as “the swim.”

  Do I smell smoke? I smell smoke. Isn’t this wonderful? I’m going to burn to death on a train the day after Christmas. At age twenty-four. Alone. I’m going to die a nobody. No one will care because no one but Wendy even knows I’m on this train, and she won’t find out about me for weeks because she never leaves the office. My parents each think I’m in different cities, and Sam will assume I decided to stay longer.

  If I go to sleep, will I wake up in Boston?

  Where are my glasses? I can’t find my glasses. It’s too dark to put in my contacts. My glasses are in my bag. I need to get my bag.

  A woman at the back stands up. “Can everyone please sit down?” she yells.

  A man in a striped uniform opens the sliding doors to our car and tells us to get off the train, adding that we should take whatever belongings we have at hand and not to worry about our bags stacked at the front. I only have my purse and a magazine with me. All my stuff is packed in my bag. I must save my black boots! Who am I without my black boots?

  I wait in line to disembark. A woman who smells like antiseptic talks to the lifeguard, and I eavesdrop. I wonder if they know each other from before or if this quasi tragedy has brought them together. I am never traveling alone again. I am never going to pack my boots again. Traveling rule number one: always carry or wear anything you consider important, which in my case, is everything. If it isn’t important, why bring it at all? Traveling rule number two: always carry a pair of running shoes; you never know when you’ll have to run from a burning train.

  I’m sitting on a layer of snow, my legs pulled into my arms. The first car of the train is on fire, and the second one is in immediate danger of being chewed by the flames.

  “Jackie?” a voice says. Is someone talking to me? Was there another Jackie on the train?

  “Yes?” I call out into the darkness.

  “I can’t believe you were on this train, too.”

  Andrew! It’s Andrew! Andrew was on my train! Thank God. Thank God thank God thank God. I jump up from the snow and throw my arms around him. “I am so glad to see you, you have no idea.”

  He hugs me, and sits down beside me. “Didn’t you see me waving at you? Were you sleeping with your eyes open?”

  Great. He thinks I’m a freak. “I took my contacts out in case I fell asleep, and I haven’t had a chance to put them back in. Aren’t you supposed to be off for another week? Why are you coming home now?”

  “Too much to do in Boston.”

  Hmm. Running back to a warm woman’s embrace, maybe? “Can’t wait to get back to Jess?”

  “No. I took your advice and ended it. There was no point. Well, there was a point, but you’d just call me a pig again.”

  He doesn’t elaborate and I don’t ask.

  People are clustered in twos and threes, clutching whatever belongings they had at their seats, watching the train burn. If only we had marshmallows. The woman who smells like antiseptic is still talking to the lifeguard, and the she-devil in the raincoat is talking to herself. The firemen are on their way, I hear the lifeguard say, but apparently they’ll be a while. It’s not like it’s an emergency or anything.

  Don’t worry about us. It’s only a twenty-car-train-burning catastrophe. No rush here. It’s not as though we’re stuck in a void somewhere between nowhere and nowhere, thank you very much.

  I give Andrew half the muffin I bought at Penn Station. He thinks it’s blueberry until he looks closely and realizes it’s chocolate. “I’m lactose intolerant,” he says and gives it back. Why is everyone these days lactose intolerant? Maybe I should be lactose intolerant, too. That seems like a better diet than the nocarb one. No chocolate, no ice cream…but no cheese? Never mind. I don’t want to be lactose intolerant.

  I reach into my purse and hand him my only package of sour berries. “Save me a couple, they’re my favorite.”

  The sky is layered with stars. We lie our heads down on his knapsack and stare up. “My head hurts,” I say, and I think he thinks I mean against the ground when I really mean I wish I h
ad an aspirin. He removes a sweatshirt from his knapsack and rolls it into a pillow for me. It smells like Bounce dryer sheets—a dead giveaway he went home for the weekend.

  “The sky looks like art class,” he says.

  “You take art class?” He takes art class? What guy takes art class? Business and art? Is this permissible? Doesn’t the registration office block this kind of combination to protect the Alpha A-type man from becoming Alpha B?

  “Yeah. I’m kind of artistic. When I was a kid, I used to dip toothbrushes into white paint, and tap them with Popsicle sticks to make stars.” He sits up suddenly. “Hey, doesn’t the sky kind of look like an Impressionist painting?”

  A thick gray cloud of smoke spreads across the sky, threatening to obliterate the so-called painting. In my blurry vision, the flames look more like smeared red and orange finger paints.

  Can I like Andrew?

  His eyes seem lighter, as though bleached by the fire. He lies down again, this time on his side, and leans on his elbow. What do I do if he leans over and kisses me? Do I want him to? Will it be good? Why do I want him to kiss me? How can I get him to kiss me? Will he taste the chocolate on my lips? Will he need to take a lactose pill?

  “I’m assuming you went to see Jeremy.”

  Oh, right. New York. I don’t answer at first. “Kind of,” I say reluctantly.

  Can I like Andrew? I think I like Andrew. Does Andrew like me? I can’t tell. Why do I always have to like someone? How can I tell if I really like Andrew or if I just like him this second because of the stars, the fire, the bleached eyes, the clean sweatshirt?

  A man who seems to be in charge—he’s wearing fluorescent—directs the waiting crowd to a farmhouse where buses are waiting to take us back to Boston. I remove my jacket and make a show of putting on Andrew’s sweatshirt. I put my jacket back on, but leave the zipper undone. In my contact-less, surrealistic condition, I imagine this is supposed to be suggestive. We trudge through a path in the forest, tripping over broken tree roots and scraping our shoes against the jagged edges. Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not wearing the black boots. I heard the she-devil say that a path was cleared to enable us to reach the road, but my feet are arguing otherwise. And I don’t remember seeing any bulldozers.