Watch Me

by Jody Gehrman

  Sam, I see, does none of these things. He hovers at the back of the room, watching me. Looks like I won’t have to seek him out after all. He’s doing the hard part for me.

  I see the girl—what’s her name? Tess? No, Jess. A gender-ambiguous name for the girliest girl in class. She wears a tight, short skirt over sheer, black tights, a leather jacket that nips in at the waist. The outfit reminds me of the “slutty cop” costumes so popular every Halloween here at Blackwood. She lingers near the door, glancing back at Sam. When he refuses to notice her, she flounces out the door, hips swinging.

  I’m still shuffling papers when he crosses the room. He stands there a long moment, just a chair between us, and I can feel his eyes on the side of my face, burning into me.

  I turn to look at him. Those wolf-blue eyes lock on to mine. He’s so intense. Standing this close to him, I can feel my nostrils flaring, trying to pick up his scent. Animal instinct. He smells of crisp leaves and rain.

  “You have a minute?” he asks softly.

  “Yes. I want to talk to you, actually.”

  “Really?” He is sweetly surprised, almost bashful. “About what?”

  “Your story.” I hand him my marked-up pages.

  He takes the manuscript from me. Scanning through my notes, his face falls. “That’s a lot of red ink.”

  “I know.” I shoulder my leather tote and glance toward the hall to make sure we’re alone. “Which probably seems like a bad thing. I know today’s workshop wasn’t easy.”

  He just shrugs, like he can handle it. I know better. I can see the pain behind his cool exterior. I know every word of criticism feels like a jagged shard of glass raked over tender flesh. I remember my own painful workshops. When I was working on Hidden Depths, I got a revision letter from my editor that felt like a rusty razor blade carving through my sternum, searching for my heart. Sometimes I read Amazon reviews so scathing and casually cruel I want to hurl my computer across the room. I know. It never goes away, that sense that you have turned yourself inside out for the world, that you have slaved to expose every muscle, tendon, and vein; in response, the world casually throws acid at your steaming innards. It’s the flippancy that always gets to me. The offhand savagery of it, like they’ve no idea it hurts.

  His eyes finally meet mine. Something passes between us, a flicker of understanding. He knows I get it. The tightness in his jaw softens.

  “Listen,” I lean toward him, lowering my voice. “I don’t want this to go to your head, but your work is incredible.”

  “Incredible?” he echoes.

  “I’ve been teaching more than ten years, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  He lets this sink in. The ice blue eyes darken slightly; his pupils dilate. Then, ever so slowly, he grins. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

  “Not about this.”

  One eyebrow jerks up. That look again. The sardonic, amused teasing. “You’d lie about other things?”

  “My agent’s coming to town tomorrow,” I blurt. Jesus, what’s wrong with me? That eyebrow got me flustered. I didn’t mean to mention Maxine. Not yet. He should develop his voice more, clean up his punctuation. He’s still raw. He doesn’t need an agent hovering, exerting pressure. She’ll want him to consider what’s commercially viable. She’ll want to push him in a specific direction. Here I get a chance to mentor someone with legitimate talent, and I stumble on my first move.

  “From New York?” His face is a pot about to boil over, but he clamps a lid on it. His self-control is really something. I could learn a thing or two from this kid.

  “Yeah. She’s speaking at a conference in Cincinnati.” I swallow. There’s no avoiding it now. I’ve introduced the topic; I have to follow through. “You should meet her.”

  “That would be amazing.” As overused as that word is, I can tell he really means it.

  “You have a novel?”

  “In progress. Yeah.” He shoves his hands deep into his pockets, like he doesn’t trust himself to let them loose. “I’m a couple hundred pages in.”

  I sigh. “It can be hard, having pressure on you at this stage.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Trying to please others before you know what you want to say.”

  He doesn’t hesitate. “I know what I want to say.”

  I offer a wan smile. The overconfidence of youth. What can you do? They have to make their own mistakes. “I’m meeting her at Oliver’s tomorrow for lunch. We’ll need the first hour to catch up, talk shop, but maybe you can join us for coffee and dessert? Say, around one-thirty?”

  “I’ll be there.” His smile is radiant—a sunrise, a meteor.

  He turns and hurries out of the classroom, leaving me to stare after him, wondering what in God’s name I’ve done.

  SAM

  You’re getting it at last. The force that pulled me through two interminable years at community college, the dream that seethed inside me when I didn’t get into Blackwood the first time, the nights I spent poring over sentences, dissecting them like fetal pigs. I spent years with your books, staring at your photo on the back, you in your leather chair, feet curled beneath you, looking sideways at the camera like you were daring me to see you.

  And I did.

  I’ve always seen you. Even before I met you.

  The first time I stumbled on a copy of Pay Dirt, something woke up inside me. I was seventeen, clearing out this trailer for Tony. Motherfucker Number Twenty-two. Vivienne tore through men in a way that was both casual and desperate, like a bulimic gorging on junk food she’ll soon puke up. Since she’d picked me up from my grandparents’ apartment in New Mexico, we’d lived in a dozen different towns, each of them more forgettable than the last. She had a job on occasion, at a casino or a mini-mart, once at a truck-stop diner. She sought out the scummiest lowlife in a ten-mile radius and shacked up with him. I had a pocket notebook where I kept a catalog of the men in her life, a list I labeled “Motherfuckers.” It pleased me to use the word in such a literal way.

  Tony was a real piece of work. He liked to find houses or trailers that had gone unoccupied long enough to ensure a little privacy. He’d go in and ransack the place, steal anything worth stealing, even if it was just the copper wiring. He tore it from the walls, leaving behind deep, angry gouges like stab wounds. Tony wasn’t my favorite Motherfucker, but he was okay. He had a little style, which is more than I can say for most of the dickwads on that list. His clothes were always pressed—he had a kind of phobia about wrinkles. He’d give me thirty bucks to help him gut a place. I found grim satisfaction in the mindless violence of the work, using a sledgehammer to pound Sheetrock to dust, ripping the wiring out like tearing the veins from a living creature.

  That’s where I found your first book, in a trailer outside New Orleans. The place reeked of mold. The walls were peeling, and there were rats nesting in the tiny bathroom. A fetid perfume of sour meat and fungus wafted from the bedroom. I wanted nothing more than to destroy the place, swing Tony’s sledgehammer and bring it down. But Motherfucker Number Twenty-two was looking for something this time—a stash of heroin rumored to exist in a Folgers can.

  As we rummaged through the owner’s sad belongings, I spotted Pay Dirt. It was lying amid a tangle of winter clothes and eight-track tapes.

  Your face stared up at me from the back of the book jacket.

  Plucking it from the wreckage, my fingers started to tingle. I took my bandanna from my pocket and wiped the dust from your soulful face. Will you think I’m being dramatic if I say it was love at first sight? I turned to the first page. Your words ripped through me like arrows.

  * * *

  I’m still high on your praise when I strut into the Happiness Club. Whoever names college bars should be shot—the Happiness Club? Really?—but I find a booth toward the back and order a Jameson on the rocks anyway. This place is new, which is good because I don’t want any memories right now. I want to sit here in this dingy new dive, sip my whiskey
, and think about us.

  On my phone, I google your agent. It seems ridiculous I haven’t done this before. Maxine Katz looks the way Cher might look if she hadn’t gone crazy with the face-lifts. Deep lines around her mouth, a little jowly, with a wild mane of gray and black hair that shoots in every direction. Very witchy. Arty with a twist of the mystic. I like her.

  This is where it starts, Kate. Tomorrow, you and I will drink coffee and eat crème brûlée with this woman. You will have inside jokes with her, references that predate my existence, and I will be the outsider, the acolyte, the upstart gazing wide-eyed into the Wonderland you call The Business. I will listen and laugh in all the right places. My fingers will graze yours once by accident as we both reach for the cream. I don’t take cream, I drink my coffee black, but I will reach for the silver pitcher so I can feel the electricity of your skin against mine.

  Maxine will tell great stories about growing up in New York, and it won’t seem pretentious when she mentions her famous clients, living and dead. You and I will glance at each other in a private, knowing way. Your eyes will say, Isn’t she great? Don’t you just love her? And mine will say, Yes, yes, yes.

  Soon we will share the same agent. You will read and re-read my novel, which will be brilliant, frightening, profound. You’ll help make it even better, with your red pen and your ruthless insights. Sometimes you’ll suffer a pang of jealousy because my sentences will carve out places in your mind you didn’t know existed. My work will make you feel things you didn’t know you could feel. In those moments, you’ll pout, or lash out with a nasty comment, and I’ll know you’re not trying to be unkind; you’re just jealous. That’s okay. It’s natural.

  Flash forward to the documentary about us. An Ira Glass–alike sits with me in our Meatpacking District loft, studying me from behind horn-rimmed glasses.

  “But wasn’t it difficult?” He tries to balance curiosity and tact. “I mean, come on. Two prize-winning, bestselling authors, one in his twenties, the other in her forties, both of you possessive, competitive. How did you make it work?”

  I will stare at him with wisdom beyond my years. “We have our demons. Always. Sure. Did I sometimes feel like bludgeoning her and dumping her in the Hudson?” I’ll chuckle. “Of course. But it’s that spark, that hunger, that makes us who we are. Together and apart. It’s that savagery that binds us.”

  “You want anything?” A flat voice jerks me out of my reverie. A redhead wearing jeans and a T-shirt bearing the idiotic name of the bar stares at me, a tray of Coors balanced on one palm.

  I’m so deep into my vision of us it takes me a second to understand her question. “Sure.” I swig the last of my whiskey and hand her the empty glass. “Jameson on the rocks.”

  “You bet, honey.”

  That’s when I see her. Vivienne. Entering in that stealthy way of hers. Like a thief. Like a junkie. She is both, of course. Her ravaged face races across the room at top speed, and all at once she’s sitting across from me. One eye is puffy and the skin on her nose is peeling, as if from a bad sunburn. It’s got nothing to do with a lack of sunscreen. Whatever’s causing her skin to flake like that, I’m positive it’s not anything as wholesome as a sunburn.

  “Vivienne.” The whiskey’s taken the edge off; her name comes out sounding hoarse and empty. If I hadn’t downed my drink too fast on an empty stomach, her face would look even uglier, even more deserving of my contempt. As it is, she’s more comical than sinister, her head swiveling from side to side like that of a cartoon robber searching for cops.

  “I hate it when you call me that.”

  “It’s your name.” I am calm. My breathing stays even. I count to five for each inhale, five for each exhale. She cannot touch me. I am in your world now, your narrative, and she belongs in a darker story.

  Her brown eyes fill with tears. I notice she’s tried doing something with her hair—dyed it black, from the looks of it. Either she didn’t get it all or it’s grown out, because the gray of her real hair shows at the roots. The effect is skunk-like.

  I try not to remember what she looked like ten years ago. She had jet-black hair that moved around her shoulders like liquid smoke. Her Cherokee cheekbones were sharp as knives back then. Now her face has gone sallow, pitted. The proud, warrior features of her girlhood have eroded beneath bloat and decay.

  Before she can say what I know she’s about to, I speak again. “How’d you find me?”

  “I’ve got ways.” Her expression turns hard. Determined. “I need that money you owe me.”

  I bark out a laugh. It comes out too loud, too angry, and a couple people at nearby tables turn to look. I inhale even slower this time, counting to seven.

  “I don’t owe you shit.”

  “Come on, Waya.”

  “My name is not Waya, it’s Sam,” I hiss.

  She rolls her eyes. This, more than anything, makes me want to pick up a chair and beat her until she’s a pulpy mess, witnesses be damned. She sees this but doesn’t back down.

  “You’re my son.” It sounds like an accusation. “I think I know what your real name is.”

  Waya is Cherokee for “wolf.” I left that shit behind me a long time ago.

  I pick up a saltshaker and study it. This ghoul cannot get to me. She is from my past, and soon I will bury everything that happened Before You and I Became One. I’ve lived twenty-two years before our story begins, and I’ll live twenty-two years after. By then you’ll be sixty and I’ll be forty-four. It’ll be a good year for us to get blind drunk and put matching bullets through our brains. Because who wants to live past sixty? I’ll check out a little early because I won’t want to breathe a single breath without you.

  Vivienne knows nothing of this. The closest she ever came to love was a needle.

  I try not to remember the mother I saw in glimpses. Tender. Devoted. Trying to make things better. She’d drag us to a new nowhere town full of promises, brimming with hope. This time, she’d get a good job, and we’d rent a nice house near a big, leafy park. I’d go to school, and she’d help me with my homework. Once, in Barstow, she managed to hold down a restaurant job for almost three months. I was proud of her. I went to school and even joined the drama club. She started talking about selling her art, these crazy, beaded dream catchers she made. I helped her build a website. Everything looked good, like we’d finally settle down and be normal.

  I came home from school one day, found her passed out with a needle in her arm. Everything we had was stolen. We moved to Las Vegas the next day.

  I study her face now, searching for signs of that woman. The one who made dream catchers. The one who tried.

  She’s gone. Buried under track marks and regret.

  “Can’t you help me out? Just this once?”

  “I’m a starving college student.” I shake my head. “I don’t have anything to give you.”

  “You’re drinking in a college bar. Bet this place don’t come cheap.”

  Only Vivienne would walk into this dive and imply it’s the Ritz.

  “You stalk me, you accost me, and now you expect me to reward your behavior with charity?” Loathing drips from my voice, but I don’t care. I want her to know just how much I hurt every time she shows up like this, feral and hunting for funds.

  “Sweetie, I know I’ve done wrong.” She bites her lip like a child. “I know I should of done better.”

  “Should have done better.”

  She looks baffled. “That’s what I said.”

  “Just out of curiosity, how much will it take for you to walk out of here right now and not show your face for at least six months?”

  “A mother wants to know her son’s—”

  “How much?” Again, I’m too loud, and more people pivot toward me, frowning.

  She won’t meet my eye. “Fifty bucks.”

  “Fine.” I reach for my wallet, yank out two twenties and a ten. I’ll have to eat Top Ramen for a month, walk everywhere, but fuck it. If this gets her out of my way
while I seal the deal with you, it’s worth it.

  Besides, it won’t be long until I’m cooking you an elaborate meal in the deluxe kitchen you never cook in, the one that’s waiting just for me.

  Vivienne shoots me one last tearful look. The money’s in her pocket, though. Her urge to score, as always, outweighs any latent maternal instincts. She jumps up, pecks me on the cheek, and shoots out the door.

  I pick up my cocktail napkin and wipe at the place where her lips fell.

  KATE

  The waiter takes our plates away. Maxine’s barely touched her salad. Women of her sort rarely eat, I’ve noticed. They’re too busy flitting from city to city, calculating, arranging. Her eyes briefly follow the tall, dark waiter’s retreating backside with a predator’s casual fascination. She clasps her hands under her chin, plants her elbows on the table, and leans toward me; her wild corkscrew curls wobble in the air like antennae.

  “So, about this boy. Quick, fill me in before he gets here.”

  I smile. “His work’s extraordinary.”

  “Of what ilk?”

  “Hunter S. Thompson meets Harper Lee?” It comes out like a question.

  She refreshes her lipstick, throws me an impatient look. Maxine hates hesitation. “You sound like you’re not sure.”

  “Here’s the thing … I may have rushed the introduction.”

  “He’s not that good?”

  “He’s extraordinary,” I repeat. Since when do I use that word so much? Sometimes I hate how I act around Maxine, like a needy little girl. She’s made some money off me. Sold two of my novels to big houses, several translations. I’m no bestseller, we’re both painfully aware of that. I do have talent, though. If she didn’t think so, she never would have signed me. So why do I feel so insecure around her, always pulling myself back from the edge? She’s got the connections, the insider’s eye, but shouldn’t the impulse and ability to tell a good story trump that? Somehow, I can never escape the sense that I’m her student, fishing around for the right answer, trying to find the magic words that will earn me a gold star.