The Listeners

by Leni Zumas

  AT THE HISTORY museum we leaned on the cold wall, and the lemon smell of the floor became a taste. Cam kissed fast, fingers tight on my neck. He pressed me to the marble. Instead of kissing back, I had to talk: “How come all these tourists who never go to museums in their regular lives go to a million when they’re on vacation?”

  “Who the fuck cares,” he whispered.

  “I don’t know, me?”—tugging his hand out from under my jacket.

  “You are bound,” Mr. Nzambi told him, “for great things.” He asked where he planned to apply next year. “Good,” he nodded when Cam said the big names. Our high school, a crappy public factory, was a disadvantage. “But your recommendations will be outstanding,” Mr. Nzambi consoled. “And if your SAT scores are anything like your PSATs…”

  Our teacher smiled, and I watched the hot reed grow taller in Cam’s throat. I could tell he was seeing himself pink-nosed in snowy northern twilight, books on his back, crossing what was known as a green.

  My parents liked Cam, despite his alarming (in their opinion) outfits, because he was polite and good at school. In the six months we went so-called out, I tried to limit their contact with him, but contact happened. He got invited to dinner, where he asked Fod—grown-up style—about his research. He mentioned a novel he was reading, and Mert dove gratefully in; the two chattered like teeth in love, while I, who had never read the book in question, toe-pinched my brother under the table.

  Their approval made me like Cam less.

  Which made me a cliché, I guess.

  I ANSWERED THE phone in the juvenile manner I only dared use when Riley was at work: “Den of Coyote, how may we help you?”

  A man’s voice said, “Quinn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Cameron.”

  “Shit,” I said. “I mean, hi!”

  “Hello,” he said. He sounded neither pleased nor displeased, friendly nor unfriendly.

  “You got my letter.”

  “I did.”

  “Great,” I said, snapping the rubber band hard.

  “Do you want to meet for a coffee?” said this man whose name was Cameron.

  “Sure,” I shouted, so nervous I had no volume control.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “When? My schedule’s very open.”

  “This week’s not good, but how about next Wednesday?”

  The voice betrayed nothing: he could have been a salesman, a business acquaintance, a doctor’s office.

  Then I smoked three cigarettes in a row, and still felt like I was shouting, but no sound was coming out.

  “IF STRANDED IN the Himalayas and your foot got frostbite, which you’d know by”—the middle squinted at the notebook—“skin that is pale and waxy and the bitten part feels like a piece of wood, what would you do?”

  “Chop it off and save the rest of me,” said the oldest.

  “Make a fire and hold the foot over the fire until it melted enough to walk on,” said the youngest.

  “The pain of melting would be exquisite,” said the middle.

  “I wouldn’t mind a fake foot,” said the oldest. “I’d look like a sea captain.”

  The middle said, “But your teeth are too clean to look like one.”

  IT WAS FOD, not Mert, waiting outside the good doctor’s building.

  “Don’t you have class?”

  He smiled. “I cancelled it.”

  “What for?” I latched my seat belt.

  “Because I wanted to pick you up.”

  “Why?”

  “Just to hang out.”

  I laughed. “Hang out?”

  “Sure, why not? We don’t get to see each other all that much.”

  I said nothing, not sure this was true. He was usually at dinner, wasn’t he?

  “So,” he said, “how was your session?”

  “Fine.”

  “She’s helpful, the doctor?”

  “Yeah she’s good.”

  “What sorts of things do you talk about?” He was acting so weird it made me want to get out of the car.

  “Things,” I said.

  He rushed: “You don’t have to be thin for us to love you!”

  “I know, Fod,” I whispered, shoving my face to the window.

  “We love you exactly the way you are. I mean, however much you weigh.”

  “I know.”

  Had my mother given him instructions? How could I tell them—make them know the real—correct them—

  “You’re a fantastic kid,” Fod added.

  How was I supposed to make them believe that I was not trying to be thinner, only trying to stop bleeding? I couldn’t, and so would endure their Afterschool Specialness.

  THE FIRST THING Pine said was, “Does either of you hate asparagus?”

  “Is that what we’re having?” asked Riley.

  “Only if you like it.”

  “It’s my preferred vegetable,” I said, already wishing this plan had never come to fruition.

  “Come into my parlor,” said Pine.

  “Nice apron,” I told her.

  “You like it?” She smoothed it over her knees. “It was my dear grandmother’s. Well, not really—the one grandmother couldn’t cook to save her pitted northern soul, and the other was so effing tight she didn’t leave a red centime, much less an apron, to any of her issue. Would you like a beverage?”

  Twelve bites only. Stop counting. No more than twelve. Stop counting.

  Pine said nothing about the asparagus left on my plate. It got swept briskly into the garbage. She presented us with a tangerine cake so shapely it was hard to believe she had baked it herself. (She might have been lying.) My brother, helping himself to a third piece, got crumbs all over the joint. Pine stalled his napkin hand with a pale finger.

  “Don’t wipe like that, they’ll smear; wipe like this.”

  Riley laughed. “You’re as bossy as our sister.”

  “Was she a domineerer?”

  “Yeah, always organizing everything.”

  Pine chomped a tangerine forkful. I sensed her beady eyes on my undrunk tea. “Too strong?” she inquired.

  “No, it’s fine. Very, um, British-tasting.”

  “Sometimes I make it darker than people on this side of the Atlantic have a taste for.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  Riley, on whom small human tensions were less lost than they were on the average male, swooped in with diversion. “So when are you finally going to tell us your real name?”

  She shrugged, said matter-of-factly: “Pine is my middle name. My first name is Crannog.”

  “Um, wow.”

  “It means lake dweller,” she explained. “I was christened after a remote ancestor famous for his ill-starred courage. Hundreds of years ago in the Highlands, he declined to send forward the fire cross.”

  “The quoi?”

  “A fire cross is a symbol in Scotland for calling the nation to arms. The tips get burnt black, and bits of it are smeared with blood, and it’s carried from one village, castle, or sheep hill to another to rouse the men. If you refuse to keep it going or to rise to arms, the last person to have it shoots you dead. Well, my cousin refused. He did not think the cause was just.”

  “What was the cause?”

  “Nobody remembers,” Pine said. “All we know is he believed it was in error—and threw the fire cross down on the peat. Took a bullet in the brain.”

  You fucking bitch, said the back of my mouth. But how was she supposed to know? Riley probably hadn’t told her the details.

  “So he’s a brave person to be named after,” Riley concluded.

  “Wasted on me, I’m afraid. I have a crippling fear of wood ticks and my idea of adventure is watching people make béarnaise sauce on television.” Pine smiled and tapped my brother’s knuckles. “Why is your hand always going over your mouth? Like a messenger afraid of getting killed.”

  “I didn’t know I do that,” Riley said. He thought he stopped
doing that. He brushed his lips with the tips of three fingers. “Is this how?”

  “No,” she said, “more like this…” and adjusted his palm flat across his mouth.

  They were practically having sex right in front of me. Riley needed to get on that, pronto. She was clearly willing. Why hadn’t he made any move? The gene pool that had given our sister her If he tries to punch me he’ll get it in the eye with scissors had been drained of guts by the time Riley’s egg began to grow.

  Back at headquarters, I remarked on the tastiness of the dinner and forced myself to add: “Pine seems like a nice person.”

  Riley blushed, setting down a pile of sheets, blanket, and pillow. “Tell me if you need more blanket.”

  “I’ll be fine. Thanks again, Coyote—I swear, it’ll be very temporary—this is extremely great of you—”

  He was at the sink filling the kettle, but even from behind I could tell what he was thinking: Fake-sweet! Fake-good-mannered! He called, “You want tea?”

  But we’d just had tea. “Anything stronger, perchance?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then sure.” I would do like the Romans.

  Stain-free pillows, can of flowers, heavy shining wood table, swept floor: my brother had an agreeable nest, so much more comfortable than my abodes had ever been. I was jealous, but proud too. He could shoot a good photograph; he could make a good room.

  And tea. It smelled pretty.

  “Don’t put it there!” he yelped. “It’ll leave a—”

  I grabbed at the cup.

  “No, wait—it’s fine—I’m sorry—you can put it down. It’s okay.”

  My hand hovered in midair.

  “Sorry, yeah, don’t worry about it!”

  I frowned, set the tea back on the table.

  “Sorry,” he repeated.

  THE NEW YEAR’S party was a huge one thrown by a famous local outfit at their compound near the zoo. Pete knew about it from his older girlfriend, who got wind of all the good parties even though she didn’t play in a band or do, really, much at all except carve griffins out of dump-salvaged wood. Cam and I trailed behind Pete into the hot throng, proud to be among so many luminaries at the home of such a notorious band. It sent a shiver up the back of my throat to brush in a hallway the same shoulder that had been wearing a guitar when I’d seen them play—or to meet, across a kitchen, the same eyes that had glared down from the park stage last summer. Cam and I had been talking about starting a band ourselves, and maybe we actually would; and maybe people would know of us one day. Kids at a party would thrill to recognize me. Once you were notorious, all you had to do was stand there in your skin.

  Ten minutes before midnight, Cam couldn’t find me. We never touched in public, only in my parents’ basement, but tonight was New Year’s: he wanted to kiss. None of the teeming little rooms contained me. Five minutes left. Upstairs to check again. One minute left. Downstairs, they were roaring the countdown: Twenty-six . . . twenty-five . . . Then he saw a ladder he hadn’t noticed earlier. The third floor was black and raw, an attic. The two bodies in the corner were gasping loud enough not to hear his feet on the rungs. A lurchy cheer from below: the fresh year. He said my name forlornly, and waited to see who the boy was.

  ON WEDNESDAY I waited the whole day inside. I smoked many cigarettes. I washed dishes and cut my toenails and played several rounds of Wake Up the Sister. The appointment was a black splotch at 6:00 PM; we were to meet near the university. “It’s a new place,” he’d said on the phone. “Kind of funky.”

  The walls and floor were orange, the ceiling green. Like being inside a pumpkin. Early, I chose a seat in the corner so that no one was behind me. At the condiment counter two dirt-children, boy and girl, were making oatmeal. They had brought their own packets, which they stirred into cups of hot water (tea was the cheapest menu item) and improved with free sugar and cinnamon. Against the wall were piled backpacks, sleeping bags, soil-stiff glimmies. They were speechlessly intent on the oatmeal—long enough with each other, I guessed, that conversation wasn’t necessary. The kids made me wistful, but it wasn’t Cam I missed: it was the untethered life. Every day you woke up and could go somewhere you’d never been. Strike out for the territory. The road was fast under you. If you didn’t like a place, you left.

  The oatmeals were now discussing a show they’d seen last week, how incredible the sound was, how it was weird they had played so much stuff from the first record and that they’d worn red life-size wings. Their voices had a fluty calm, broken now and then by laughter; they were relaxed in the knowledge that they’d see another incredible show soon, and if not soon, eventually.

  I knew, had known, so many names. They used to stand on shelves in my brain, easily reached for. One had led to another: Yeah but have you heard the band he was in before, they were called—Have you heard. Have you seen. Do you know. Then, a name: and the name had said a lot about you, if the other person knew enough to decode it. What good did it do me now to know the name of the third drummer for . . . , to have seen the second-ever show of . . . , or to own an original pressing of the first album of . . . ? Our manager, Uncle Seven, had never failed to be impressed by all I knew, because it was a male expertise. In his own day, girls had filled out the audience.

  Two people could be a tribe unto themselves. These dirt-children were. They roamed as a unit, unafraid because together. The boy picked an oatmeal flake off the girl’s chin. She handed him a lighter as he headed out to smoke. Secure in the certainty he would return, she turned her attention to a small pink notebook. She was trying to quit, herself, so she wrote instead. She chronicled their adventures. Here we are in not the world’s coolest city but I like it sort of.

  I saw Cam come through the door. He looked fuller. Not fat, just—filled. His cheeks no longer slanted inward. Encasing his now-solid legs was the kind of father-pant denim he’d once have committed suicide before wearing in public. But his hair was the same: black and shiny, old-fashioned, excellent.

  A hearty smile parted my lips and I got to my feet. “Hi!”

  “Hi,” he said, slowing down. We were not going to hug. He arranged himself in the green seat across from me. “Hope this is all right? We have to go up to the counter—no table service.”

  His hands had gone straight into his lap.

  I wanted badly to smoke.

  “So you look good,” he said.

  I wondered if he was making fun of me. Of course I did not look good. Econo-chic, which everyone back in the day had hurried to master, was now for me actually true—and it didn’t age so nicely. Too old to be chic, I was gruesomely econo. I ate frozen burritos and not enough vegetables. I wore old britches, old button-downs, corduroy jackets that did not become me. Cam, on the other hand, looked like a grown-up who went to the gym, flossed daily, and ate plenty of greens. His running times and mortgage rates were down; his bowling scores and IRAs were up.

  “How’s your little brother?” he said.

  “Crazy as ever. And still a virgin, I think.”

  He smiled, much like someone’s parent at a piano recital. I reached to snap, but my wrist was bare. He said, “You coming from work?”

  “Um, no, I’m not. You?”

  “Yeah, I taught a seminar this afternoon, then met with a couple of students.” He was keeping his hands in his lap.

  I stormed my brain for something to say.

  He smiled, too stretchily. “You want to get some food, or—?”

  “Sure, totally. I can go order for us—what do you—I mean, coffee, or—?”

  “No, no,” he said, “I’ll go—”

  “No, seriously, it’s fine—”

  Together we marched to the counter, staring straight ahead.

  I HEARD CAM say my name. He was a black shape by the stairs. Pete and I hadn’t undressed so it didn’t take long to cover ourselves. “Hey,” I squeaked. My brains were beating hard. Pete started to lift his face but I shoved it down, wanting to delay as long as possible the
moment when Cam understood the size of the betrayal.

  He didn’t speak to me again until the start of senior year. I had long since stopped fooling around with Pete, whose devotion to the griffin carver proved irritatingly strong.

  I found a note in my locker: Even though you kicked me in the fucking heart I have decided we can be friends again.

  Our first activity of being friends again was a trip to the convenience store. I bought a frostee for him, licorice for myself. “Those socks are so awesome,” I said. “They match your suspenders!”

  “Shut up, Quinn,” Cam said.

  Our second activity was me learning that he was going out with Clarissa Smith, a girl I hated. He delivered the news so casually you’d never have known—although I did know—how much he was relishing it.

  “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before,” he said, and it worked. That is, it hurt.

  ONCE THE COFFEES were steaming in front of us, our bodies again in their careful cross-table hunches, I wanted to scream or laugh. Maybe howl. Cackle? What would Cam do if I began cackling and refused to stop?

  “So are…”

  “Sorry?”

  “Are you still playing music?” he said loudly.

  “Oh no. No no no no. It hurts my ears.” Without thinking, I added, “How about you?”

  He held up his left hand. It was pale and smooth and empty; he could have been making a fist. The fingers could have been hiding. The thumbnail, I saw, was clean. “Makes it a little difficult,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For what?”

  I scrunched my cheeks.

  He waited.

  “For that incredibly stupid question.”

  Cam nodded. We cleared our throats and sipped our coffees. For the next fifty-two minutes our talk was entirely small. I spoke of the bookstore and its demise; he described being a tax attorney and how it differed, in ways good and bad, from teaching tax law. Our parents were asked after and reported to be fine. Romantic statuses were touched upon: me, a dry season; him, a girlfriend of three years he hadn’t gotten around to proposing to. She was a lawyer too, but not tax.