“Shit!” Caroline hissed. As she turned to free it the heel snapped off just as the little dangling wire to her Nokia headset caught on the gearshift, the earpiece hooking on her Pasquale Bruni earring and jerking her back. Caroline lurched off balance, then went down. As she did the lid came off the travel mug: sales contracts, color brochures, and day-old caffeine went flying, soaking the leather interior, the scattered files, and the front of her new Donna Karan silk blouse.
Caroline let out a barely muffled scream and threw the rest of the file across the neat lawn, then fought like hell to keep from crying. It was just that kind of day. A big client at Ethan Allen was inches from closing: five beds and four baths, living, dining, and den, some hotshot VP from Towson and his wife redecorating their entire house — a "starter castle", as it was known the trade — some five thousand square feet of upwardly mobile opulence. Caroline had been working them all month, matching earth tones to accents until her eyes glazed over, catering to their every vague yet entitled need. She had taken countless late-night inspiration calls and countless more meetings with the exec’s wife — a taut Prada princess with nothing better to do with her day than buff her abs and imagine new ways to spend hubby’s quarterly bonus — smiling and nodding as the prissy little skank went from nuevo to retro to country classic to postmodern and back again with nary a clue. Caroline had pressed on like a trouper — coordinating contractors, making every conceivable arrangement — until finally she had them pinned down: a revolting mélange of styles that violated every aesthetic atom in her being, but screw it, it was worth the nine grand in commission when they finally got off the fence and signed. Which they were supposed to do at nine forty-five this morning.
Which they then did not do.
Caroline had watched with mounting panic as the clock ticked by ten, then eleven, then noon. The contracts were neatly laid out on her desk. The clients did not return her calls. Finally she tracked down the VP on his cell, on the ninth hole at the Golden Horseshoe in Williamsburg. He sounded chipper — like nothing in the world was amiss — and thanked her for all her hard work. He said they’d opted for a little getaway. But when Caroline tried to pin him down, he finally fessed up: they had decided to “go another way”. Thank you, and buh-bye.
And that was that. No further explanation, not even the grim satisfaction of knowing she had been gutted by a margin-slicing competitor selling Chinese knockoffs of high end product at thirty percent under her cost, or some big box discount joint dealing direct and screwing them all. She was simply dismissed, adding injury to insult as nine thousand badly needed dollars sprouted little angel wings and flew away.
When Ellen had found out about it, she had summoned Caroline into her office. Caroline had grit her teeth and dutifully gone, trying hard to mind the fact that the twenty-two year old who had once been her assistant was now her twenty-nine-year-old boss. Ellen had smiled and cautioned Caroline that regional was looking at cutbacks and she had best bring her accounts up to speed in the next quarter; when Caroline had protested, Ellen had pretended to listen and then had abruptly cut her off, told her to just do it.
Don’t forget, she had told her, you’re expendable.
“Expendable,” Caroline muttered bitterly for the five hundredth time, like a bad sample loop replicating endlessly into the core of her self-esteem. It was the first time in her life she had ever been called that, and it burned. She felt degraded and humiliated, emotionally downsized.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought morosely, the sentiment extending beyond this latest incident to encompass her entire adult existence. I was going to do something important. I was going to be an artist. She was thirtyish —- stopped officially counting at the decade’s mid-mark —- and attractive enough, with auburn hair, sharp, clear eyes, and the all-around super-straight air of the reformed wildass. But it gnawed at her — the years of schooling, the degree from Parsons, the frustrated ambitions that gradually gave way to the encroaching demands of marriage and motherhood and mortgage and the sundry other trappings of a normal life. The life she never planned on having. The life that now, more than ever, felt like a drowning tide, slowly closing over her.
“Shit,” Caroline said again, sitting in a frustrated heap, wallowing in her own personal whirlpool of middle class torment. It was ten to six; Kevin would be home soon. There was barely time to get a tasty and nutritious din-din nuked and on the table.
Caroline gave a deep sigh, then picked herself up and set about containing the damage.
Muted laughter and the low thud of trip-hop filtered down from upstairs, followed by the smell: dank and sweet, like a sinister vapor trail.
No, Caroline intoned, sniffing. No way in hell. Not in my house. Not today. She ascended in stocking feet, ruined shoes kicked off at the foot of the stairs, an recoiled as sound and scent grew stronger. She came to the door at the end of the hall, twisted the knob. Locked. She banged on the door.
On the other side, the laughter stopped, followed by the urgent sound of bodies flailing in hasty search of garb. A beat later the door cracked open and Zoe appeared, dark hair disheveled, shirt misbuttoned, jeans unzipped. A vaporous scent wafted around her like an alien atmosphere.
“What?” Zoe said, her tone dripping with nineteen year-old contempt. Her blue eyes were red-rimmed, pupils irised wide, hugely stoned. “What?”
“Can I talk to you?” Caroline said with barely mustered civility. It was not really a question. She looked past her daughter and caught glimpse of a young man hunkered on the edge of the unmade bed, pulling on his boots even as he tried to blend into the woodwork. He stood, flipping long, braided hair back, and turned. His shirt was open, revealing smooth chocolate skin. He looked at her and smiled sheepishly.
Zoe saw the look on her mother’s face and instinctively stepped forward to block the view. “Could you come back later?” she replied, also not a question. “I’m kinda busy right now.”
“Now,” Caroline said flatly, eyes flaring. Zoe rolled her eyes and sighed grievously. She might have taken after her father in many ways, but she had her mother’s sighs.
It was thirty minutes later when Kevin Connolly opened the back door, stripped off his leather Harley jacket, and walked in on domestic Armageddon. The air reeked of Glade. In the living room, the battle was still raging.
“I can’t believe you!” Zoe cried. “You’re such a hypocrite!”
“That has nothing to do with this!” Caroline spat back. “I will not have you smoking dope and screwing in my house!”
“It’s my house too! I’m not a child anymore! You can’t tell me what to do!”
Kevin sighed. God, not again. When Caroline's zero-tolerance approach collided with Zoe's equally intolerable teen defiance, the last thing Kevin Connolly could hope to be was neutral Switzerland. Both his wife and step-daughter were stubborn and strong-willed, but this close to home, his professional training was no help at all; the resulting paralysis just aided and abetted the slow-death dissolution of his nuclear family unit. He glanced back at his leather jacket, a distant thought urging him to just head back out, hop on his hog, and ride.
Kevin headed for the fridge instead, wishing against his own hard-won better judgment that there was a beer in there, or a wine cooler, or even an NA-styled malt beverage. Alas, and thank God, no. He grabbed the pitcher of iced tea and poured himself a glass, then eased his bulky frame down in the cozy breakfast nook. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was an exercise in contemporary casual perfection, like Martha Stewart on steroids. Caroline had seen to every tiny detail, from the neat black-and-white checkerboard floor tiles to the whitewashed pine cupboards and black granite countertops, the herb box in the oversized window over the big double sink, the hanging delicate crystals sparking refracting prisms of light, the cutesy Pennsylvania Dutch plate that read BLESS THIS HAPPY HOME. The décor was part wish fulfillment, part heavily-reinforced false advertising… and at the moment, Kevin groaned. His job at the Upper
Baltimore Self-Help Center left him drained enough as it was: eight hours an underpaid day of overseeing addicts and victims of domestic violence in an endless stream of damaged humanity, not to mention coping with the latest round of politically fashionable budget cutbacks. Bad enough he had to lay off three counselors this week and more than doubled his own caseload in the process, and he still wondered if his own head would be next on the proverbial chopping block. Worse still that Caroline was perpetually overworked and overstressed, and the primary breadwinner, the disparity in their respective earning power a fact that she often invoked at moments of peak anxiety. But to come home to his own private drug war… it was just too much.
Just then Zoe stalked in, in a flurry of homegrown homegirl fury, Caroline following hot behind. The air crackled with outraged estrogen. “Don’t you walk away from me!” Caroline barked.
Zoe ignored her, grabbing a Snapple from the fridge. As she turned Caroline saw Kevin, caught squarely in the crossfire. He smiled uneasily.
“This isn’t funny!” she said, pointing to her daughter. “She was smoking pot! With some… boy!”
The pause was a naked edit; the B-word was out there. Zoe picked up on it in a heartbeat. “He’s not a ‘boy’,” she said. “His name is Trey…”
“Really!” Caroline whirled, righteous parental indignation on overdrive. “Well, Trey isn’t welcome here anymore!”
“Like he ever would be?” Zoe shot back. “What bugs you more, Mom — that we were fucking, or that he’s black?”
And that was when Caroline slapped her: a short sharp smack that shocked all three of them with its ferocity.
“Jesus, Caroline!” Kevin blurted out. “What the hell are you doing?”
Zoe’s cheeks flamed red against pale skin; her eyes went wide, welling tears that she would not let fall. Caroline, for her part, looked horrified: her offending hand hanging before her like a suddenly innocent bystander. “Oh God, sweetie, I didn’t mean that!” She reached out imploringly; Zoe recoiled, then her eyes went steely cold.
“This is bullshit,” she hissed, slamming the Snapple bottle down. “I’m outta here.”
She pushed past Caroline, moving toward the back door. Kevin started to stand.
“Zoe, don’t…“ he began. “Let’s talk about this…”
“Fuck you, Kevin!” Zoe snapped. “You’re not my father!”
Kevin stopped, stung. Zoe turned and stormed out. The back door slammed. Caroline and Kevin were left staring at the door, the floor, each other.
“Well,” he sighed. “That was fun…”
“Tell me about it,” Caroline nodded morosely. “This day has been from hell. I don’t know how it could possibly get worse…”
Just then the phone rang. They both looked at it warily. It rang again. Though she was physically closer, Caroline made no move to answer it. Kevin shrugged and picked up.
“Connolly residence,” he said officiously. A pause as he rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry, she’s not available right now…”
Caroline looked at him, mouthed Who is it?
Suddenly the pace of the conversation quickened. “What?” Kevin said. “Whoa, slow down… what kind of emergency?”
Caroline moved toward him, suddenly concerned; Kevin muffled the phone to his chest as he cast her a baleful glance.
“It’s Josh,” he said. She looked at him, like Josh? Then it clicked.
“Oh shit,” she said.
Kevin sat flopped on the microsuede camelback couch in the living room, absently channel surfing the big-screen Samsung TV with the sound turned down and the closed caption on, trying to not hear the muted strains of Caroline’s voice in the kitchen. He could hear her pacing and feel the tension vibrating through the walls. He tried to imagine the effect Joshua Custis would have on Caroline right now, didn't even want to think about it. It rankled him, too, his own instant demotion to emotional second-class citizen the moment the call came through.
Kevin sighed; it had ever been thus. Josh, the great love of Caroline's life, long since banished along with the rest of the relics from her reckless youth, yet still somehow maddeningly, occasionally around. They had remained friends, close in a way that belied explanation… or at least, none was ever offered. And even though Caroline spoke very little of that period, she guarded it zealously, part of the vast, uncharted expanse of her past. It was like some great secret had transpired between them, some personal demon that had marked her forevermore. Kevin wondered if Joshua Custis might be the one to finally pry the lid off her past and let those demons loose.
And he wondered where he would be were that ever to happen.
Caroline, for her part, wasn't a happy camper. In the best of times, once every couple of years was more than enough for a call from Josh; a quick update to know he was okay, an even quicker trundle down a truncated memory lane. She had a continuing interest… no, make that need… to know he was all right, less from any residual romantic baggage than a simple affirmation that gravity still worked and her own hard-fought reality was still intact. But listening to his crazed ideas about the world and how it worked was enough to drive anybody a little nuts; understandable, given the past they shared, a past that few even knew about and most would not believe if they did. Now, with Zoe’s transgression — and her own — so fresh in her mind, Caroline didn’t know if she could handle it. At that moment she was more than ready to write Josh off for good.
Right up until the point that he told her Justin was gone.
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?” she said, a seed of genuine dread suddenly blossoming in her heart. “What are you talking about?”
“It happened yesterday,” he said. “He was back at the house…”
“What house?” she said, but the dread in her heart told her: there was only one house. The only one that mattered. Her voice lowered to a hushed urgency. “Jesus, Josh, what was he doing there?” she asked, not entirely sure she wanted to hear the answer.
“I can’t explain right now,” he said, his own voice dropping to a near whisper. “Something happened…”
Caroline listened to the rest of it as if from a great distance. The news hit her like a wrecking ball, making the seemingly solid firmament go suddenly rubbery beneath her feet. She asked what happened. An accident, he said, and did not elaborate. Josh told her that the funeral would be held this Friday. He begged her to come. And all the sweet reason and common sense in the universe meant nothing as twenty years of heavily buttressed mental walls cracked open.
“Yes”, she answered, amazed at the word even as it left her lips. “Yes, I’ll be there.”
Caroline hung up. She stood for a moment, quivering. Then, very quietly, started to cry.
3
Wednesday, August 27th. New York City. 10:20 p.m.
Amy Kaplan’s battered CD boom box sat by the threadbare Salvation Army mattress, along with a stack of disks from notable indie women artists — Ani DiFranco, Aimee Mann, Karling Abbeygate. Music played low in the background, an ethereal female voice with a lilting English accent set against pulsing, sinister backbeat:
There’s something terrible about Ellis
He’s not who he pretends he is
No he’s not a penniless poet,
In fact he’s ruled by cosmic forces…
A small fan whirred in the close confines of the Avenue D room as Amy sat cross-legged on the mattress, a silk scarf wrapped tightly around her exposed calf. The little fan didn’t cool so much as rearrange the stultifying air, still close and heavy even after nightfall. The miles of concrete, brick, and pavement absorbed heat during the day and radiated it back until the wee hours, like some giant kiln built to bake nine million souls to a disagreeably ripe disposition, basted in soot and dumpster juice and served on a bed of wilted dreams.
On the boom box, the music continued.
When Ellis listens to these cosmic forces
He says baby contact is being made
But I caught him rolling t
he baker’s wife
He’s a devil a charlatan
He says he’s lying low…
The room was small and spare but clean, with not a trace of the usual haphazard squalor of a junkie squat — no fast-food wrappers, empty bottles, rancid — clothing or crumpled bits of foil. Rather, it was ascetic — spartan, even. Her few clothes were neatly folded in an old wooden milk crate; one pair each of sandals, sneakers, and boots were all lined up against the far wall. A battered biker’s jacket hung on the back of the door. A small collection of cosmetics and aromatic oils was neatly arranged around a flea-market vanity draped with Indian-print scarves; a street-scavenged table and chair sat by the tiny kitchenette, done in early Dinner for One. No TV. No radio. No computer. No telephone. Just the little CD player and a small pile of dog-eared books on Tarot, I Ching, the Kabala, and other esoteric and bizarre subjects.
The music swelled.
Lying low, he’s lying low,
He’s lying lying lying
Must have been around
for a hundred years
a hundred years or more…
Amy blinked back perspiration and focused on the task at hand: namely, finding a serviceable vein beneath the Celtic tattoo around her ankle. She tapped the inked skin until a faint bulge appeared. Good enough. Then she tapped her works with a well-chewed fingernail and jammed the ten cc’s of temporary heaven home. A curl of blood appeared in the hypo’s chamber — always a good sign. Amy pressed the plunger and the hit sluiced in; she withdrew and placed the works in a Starbuck’s cup containing a dollop of Clorox. She was good to go.
Amy loosened the scarf and let a whole other kind of warmth wash over her — a tingling orgasmic rush that flooded her senses in the space of two heartbeats and filled her with chemical bliss. As she leaned back into the high, the music swelled and refrained:
Must have been around
for a hundred years
a hundred years or more…
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