Emergency Contact

by Mary H. K. Choi

  Should I read Harry Potter from the beginning again?

  He took a selfie in the bathroom mirror and sent it to her.

  She wrote back:

  Um

  And then:

  So I SHOULD read them or . . .

  OK

  wait

  did you do that on purpose

  I need advice

  Help me

  OK

  Take the plea deal!

  Ask me something else

  my advice RN is en FUEGO

  Stop

  WAIT so you don’t have a court date?

  I’m seeing Lorraine

  Penny fell silent. Bubble. Then no bubble.

  So he wrote:

  It’s not a date

  Sam didn’t know why he was explaining himself. After a long moment she responded.

  So no bowling or Putt-Putt?

  Ice skating

  Then karaoke

  Waterfall picnic at dusk

  Very cool

  PS hay rides > karaoke

  Don’t forget flowers

  Carnations!

  NO!

  A corsage!

  Dinner

  Just dinner

  I want to die

  Why die?

  Probably have a panic attack

  “Calm down”

  Ha.

  So shirt? Y/N?

  Shirt seems desperate

  Dress regular

  Sooooo . . . orange bell-bottoms

  Yah and pink Uggs

  Pls delete this foto

  NEVER

  Send n00dz

  Sam took off the shirt and grabbed a black T-shirt. The blue veins coursed along his body like tributaries until they disappeared under the indelible black tattoos that his friends had carved into him. He had sixteen in all. Several crappy stick-and-pokes—crossed arrows, diamonds, snails, hands, and hamsas to ward off evil eyes—and the rest from an artist whose house he’d painted in exchange for twenty hours in his chair.

  He stared at his chest, curving his shoulders inward and creating a golf-ball-size divot on his sternum. For a brief period during sophomore year, he’d tried to gain weight, filling gallon plastic jugs of water and using them as dumbbells, hoisting them above his head over and over in front of the mirror. The hopeful determination in his reflection as he stood in his underwear was embarrassing even in memory.

  Growing up, the problem wasn’t so much the lack of strength training as it was food. Groceries were scarce and money for school lunches was a non-starter. Brandi Rose, who was not above collecting workmen’s comp on dubious grounds, was somehow too proud to fill out the paperwork for her son’s need-based meals. “We don’t do handouts,” she’d say. By junior year, Sam said to hell with it and forged the paperwork himself.

  At first he’d gotten the tattoos to create a diversion from his slight frame but now he no longer hated his body. It was tidy. Contained. Efficient. Though Penny would probably be horrified if she ever did see him with his clothes off. Objectively, his body was alarming.

  Sam picked Lorraine up in Fin’s Ford Festiva slightly before eight. It was a mud-brown fourteen-year-old beater that was so rusted through you could lift the mat on the driver’s side and watch the highway rush by from a quarter-sized peephole.

  Sam buzzed at the gate as she’d requested.

  “Hey,” she said. She wore what she usually did when she was off work—a somewhat abbreviated version of a nightie.

  Lorraine. Lorr. Lore. Or Lola as she called herself lately, though Sam never did.

  He could practically feel his pupils dilate when he saw her.

  “Nice dress,” he said when she opened the door to his car. He wondered if he should’ve gotten out and opened it for her, though she would’ve made fun of him for it. It wasn’t as if she were infirm.

  “Uh, thanks for picking me up.” She pulled him in for a hug. It was an awkward sideways embrace where you’re both sitting down and the non-hugging arm gets mashed, but still, it knocked the wind out of him.

  As was customary for when he saw her, he felt his thoughts go all soft and watery. She smelled so good, exactly the way she was supposed to. He knew every bit of real estate on her body. He thought about her feet again.

  Lorraine pulled away and started laughing. “This is so absurd,” she said, putting her seat belt on.

  “I can’t believe Fin loaned you his car.” She looked into the backseat and wrinkled her nose. “I could have picked you up.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  Sam partially regretted leaving Fin’s empty soda bottles in the backseat even if he’d done it on purpose. This was not a date.

  By the time Sam pulled up at Mother’s, a spot far enough off campus that it wasn’t overrun with students, they’d exhausted small talk. And when Sam got her door, she didn’t make too big a deal out of it. She thanked him primly and touched his forearm.

  They slid into the deep, padded booth. On their early dates, they were the annoying couple that sat on the same side, whispering, canoodling, picking up bits of food to feed each other like lovesick birds.

  “Do you want to split the ziti and the sausage and peppers?” Lorraine asked, scanning the menu. Sam had been dreaming about meatballs, yet he found himself shrugging. “Sure.”

  Sam remembered why they shared food whenever they went out. Lorraine would order the two things she wanted and strong-armed him into wanting them as well.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to get a vegetable or a salad?” he asked, eyeing the sides. “Something with folate?”

  Lorraine peered over the leather-bound wine list.

  “Sam, what is folate?”

  “It’s in broccoli,” he said. “Pregnant ladies have to take it so the baby’s spine doesn’t grow outside of their bodies. Don’t do an image search. It’s upsetting.”

  She laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t laugh.”

  Lorraine picked up a piece of focaccia, dipped it in olive oil, and took a bite, chewing slowly.

  She crossed her arms, and Sam noticed the glint of a new charm bracelet on her wrist. It was visibly expensive—crowded with ornate silver beads and intricate replicas of what appeared to be shoes. He wondered who’d bought it for her.

  “How are you, Lorr?” he asked. What he wanted to ask her was: “Do you miss me?” But it didn’t quite seem the right time. Maybe after tiramisu.

  Sam also really wanted to ask what all of this was about. Whether she’d had her appointment and discovered complications. Why else would she not have texted him back?

  “Before you light into me,” she began, “I haven’t gone to the clinic yet.”

  He couldn’t believe it.

  “What? Why?”

  “I couldn’t make it,” she said, snapping a breadstick in half. “It was insane at work. But I made an appointment for tomorrow. I’m going tomorrow.”

  Sam couldn’t believe how cavalier she was being. Period lateness count: seven weeks.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I . . . I couldn’t deal.” She crumbled the rest of the breadstick onto the tablecloth.

  “Well, you’re going to have to deal with this,” he said. “We’re going to have to deal.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know this makes no sense, but I don’t think I’m pregnant. I don’t feel pregnant.”

  Sam studied Lorraine for any physical differences. He took a quick peek at her boobs and they appeared about the same.

  “Are you checking me out to see if I look knocked up?”

  Yes.

  “No,” he told her.

  The waiter came around.

  “Uh, yeah, we’re going to split the ziti and the . . .” Man, he definitely wanted meatballs.

  “Sausage and peppers,” she finished.

  “And a glass of merlot,” said Lorraine. She pulled out her driver’s license.

  “I guess you really don’t feel pr
egnant, huh?” he asked, once the waiter had left.

  Lorraine rolled her eyes. “French women drink up until the very end,” she said.

  “French women also eat horse,” said Sam under his breath.

  “What?” Lorraine asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “I take it you’re not drinking lately?” She leaned back into the booth.

  “No,” said Sam, leaning in. “Haven’t since all of this happened,” he said, stirring the sky with his forefinger.

  “Understandable. The smell of gin still turns my stomach.” Lorraine shuddered.

  Shameful scenes from their breakup slammed into Sam’s head. The two of them screaming in the street after his debit card stopped working. She’d called him a “bum like his father” and he’d called her a “duplicitous bitch.”

  “Lorr, why’d you ask me here?”

  “Well, you picked the restaurant,” she said, smiling sweetly.

  “Lorraine . . .”

  “I don’t know,” she said, averting her gaze. “I thought it would be nice.”

  Lorraine snapped another breadstick into ever smaller pieces and arranged them on the table.

  He braced himself for the news that they were having twins. Or that she was engaged to someone else.

  “That’s it? Really?” he asked. “No news?”

  She shook her head.

  Sam couldn’t believe he’d had to ask for an advance on his paycheck for this.

  “You know what?” he said after a while.

  She glanced up at him.

  “Let’s create a pact.”

  “A pact,” she repeated. Lorraine reached for another breadstick to pulverize. He took it from her. Wasted food made him crazy.

  “Yeah,” he said. “The pact is we’ll table everything serious for the duration of the meal, and you and me, we’ll catch up.”

  Lorraine’s wine arrived.

  “We don’t have to talk about the other stuff.”

  “Deal,” she said. She raised her glass in a toast and took a sip.

  Sam wanted to excuse himself to look up fetal alcohol syndrome statistics but couldn’t in the spirit of the pact. Stupid pact . . .

  “So,” said Lorraine. “What I want to know is . . .” She paused.

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” she said.

  “No, tell me.”

  “Where have you been living?”

  Sam blinked. “Near campus,” he said.

  “Where near campus?”

  “Off Guadalupe,” he said. A partial lie at worst. “Why the Spanish Inquisition?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light.

  Their pasta dishes landed on the table with a thud as Sam decided he wasn’t hungry. The ziti looked dry.

  “Eat and switch?” she asked. “And don’t worry, dinner’s on me.”

  Sam nodded and handed her the sausage first. She inevitably wanted the sausage first so she could pick out the crispy ends. The best parts.

  “Well.” Lorraine tried again. “I know you’re not living in your car, unless you’re sleeping out of Fin’s. Which I obviously don’t envy.”

  Sam’s cheeks burned. Lorraine had a habit of kidding in a way that made you want to walk off a bridge.

  “And I talked to Gunner and Gash, so I know you’re not living with them.” Sam used to see Gunner and his cousin Ash (a.k.a. Gash) five nights a week.

  He fell silent.

  “How’s school?” she asked after a while. Sam shoveled a forkful of pasta into his mouth to mull over the answer. He nodded while he chewed.

  Why was Lorraine on a fact-finding mission?

  “Good.” He swallowed. “I’m taking a film course at ACC and it’s fine. A lot of freedom. I’m shooting a documentary.”

  “Finally,” she said, picking at her meal. “Isn’t it expensive?”

  “It ain’t cheap,” he said. “But you can borrow gear, and if all else fails, I’ve got my phone. I’ll shoot it fast and dirty.”

  “Well, that suits you,” she said.

  What the hell did that mean?

  They ate in silence.

  “Your turn,” said Sam, working to keep his tone even. “How’s the job?”

  “Job’s good,” she said. “I got a raise. Nothing to write home about. Hopefully a promotion’s next. I’ll probably be a junior account manager by next year, which is what I want. I’ll get to travel to LA.”

  “That’s great,” he said. He realized he meant it. Traveling for work was the height of glamour as far as Lorraine was concerned.

  “And I love the people I work with,” she said. “They’re young and fun to hang out with. You’d think they’re corny.”

  Sam immediately thought about Paul again. He had no idea what he looked like. Not that it mattered. Sam could imagine his type exactly. He envisioned Lorraine celebrating her promotion over eighteen-dollar cocktails with some douche-bag with a big shiny watch and buffed square fingernails. He probably plucked his eyebrows and bleached his enormous capped teeth. He thought back to when he and Lorraine met, when she described herself first and foremost as a DJ. He’d since learned most DJs or comedians or musicians were artists by the grace of their parents’ financial support.

  “Sausage?”

  Sam nodded. The plate of oily meat and tangles of peppers and onions made him queasy. Or perhaps it was something else.

  “Lorr, what happened to us?”

  Lorraine laughed dryly and took another sip of wine.

  “So much for the pact.”

  “Well,” he said. “We make up and break up without talking about what actually happened.”

  “What are you asking me, Sam?”

  “It doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. “Why we’re not together.”

  Lorraine put her fork down and sighed.

  “We don’t make sense,” she said. As if that explained anything.

  “How can you say that?”

  Sam suddenly wished he’d ordered a glass of wine. Or a box.

  “We’re not friends,” she said.

  Sam felt the dull thud of her words in his sternum. It took all of his composure to maintain eye contact. He scrunched his napkin under the table.

  “We were these lunatic hotheads that fought and made up,” Lorraine continued. “You’d scream and cry. I’d want to get it over with, and that was that.”

  Sam couldn’t stand the way she distilled their relationship to the plot of a formulaic rom-com. Or as if she were wearing a white coat and chuckling about the mating lab rats she kept under observation.

  “You say that like there weren’t truly beautiful moments,” he muttered into his food. “We loved each other.”

  “I know we did,” she said. She took his hand in hers, with a tender smile playing on her lips, as though she were bargaining with a child. “I still love you in a way. I swear to God, Sam, sometimes you were so good at literally reading my mind.”

  Sam pictured Lorraine cracking his skull open and reading his brain grooves literally like braille.

  “But we were together for four years,” she continued. “And you didn’t make an effort to get to know me or my family.”

  At the mention of “family,” Sam stiffened. He wasn’t big on the Mastersons. He recalled the abysmal Easter when he’d had dinner with them at Chez Jumelles.

  “Oh, you mean the time your racist dad asked me if I had any Middle Eastern blood so he’d have a real reason to hate me?”

  Lorraine removed her hand from his. “No, he didn’t,” she said.

  “He sure did,” he said. Not that it made a difference. The night was a wash from the get-go. The Capital Metro bus strike happened at the last minute and Sam arrived straight from work in a bleach-stained Black Flag T-shirt.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You were outright hostile toward them. It’s hardly my parents’ fault that they’re well off. They work like demons.”

  She said this plainly. As if there were no privileges inherent in b
eing land-rich by pedigree for generations. A distant relative on her mom’s side, C.E. Doolin, had also happened to invent the Frito. Rather, he’d happened to buy the recipe for a song from the Mexican man who’d invented it.

  “It’s not as if it were some great secret that you were”—she gazed up at him—“not well off.” She miraculously sidestepped calling him poor. “Your clothes are a dead giveaway.”

  Sam chewed on the inside of his cheek. Lorraine went on cataloging his shortcomings between bites of food. Sam was a romantic, no doubt, and these were parts of their relationship he’d forgotten about. The comparisons. Sam wanted to get up, calmly set his napkin down, and sprint out into the night.

  “Hey,” said Lorraine, poking his hand. “I’m just joshing. Partly.”

  Sam didn’t think so. He took another bite as his stomach roiled. Though, mercifully, he didn’t pass out.

  PENNY.

  “Writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”—Mary Heaton Vorse.

  Penny got up at five fifteen a.m. No matter when she closed her eyes, they snapped open before six. These days it was a blessing, seeing as she needed a quiet moment to write. She hadn’t had to do that before—find time. And she wondered lately if tapping out little blue bubbles to Sam was somehow sucking her inspiration well dry. Penny feared that she’d used up her best stuff on him, and her mind wandered constantly. It didn’t help that a pert little antenna stayed vigilantly trained on her phone, scanning the airwaves to see if he needed company or was having a mini crisis.

  Penny threw on a sweatshirt and cracked open her laptop.

  Henry Miller, whose middle name was Valentine and who when he died was married to a Japanese woman, said, “Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterward.” Penny wondered where marrying came in, considering Miller had five wives. She also wondered where workshopping Sam’s drama fell in terms of priorities. For Penny, it was sizing up to be “text first and always.”

  SAM HOUSE

  Sunday 4:14 PM

  What do you love about your writing class

  Nothing. I hate it

  Also i love it

  Obvs

  Say more

  OK

  Penny cracked her knuckles. She’d hooked up iMessage to her laptop so she could type as much as she wanted without her fingers falling off.