Watch Me

by Jody Gehrman

  “Did you see that?” I whisper.

  She nods, laughing. “Oh my God, that’s such a trip!”

  “Un-fucking-believable.”

  “You’re crying.” Zoe blinks at me. Her hair’s a tangled rat’s nest, but she’s gorgeous.

  “Of course I am. This shit’s emotional. We’ve been up for twenty-seven hours. I’m a wreck.”

  “You’re a wreck?” She scoffs. “My vajayjay’s a crime scene.”

  I touch Drew’s face with the tips of my fingers. He’s so miniature. So impossibly soft. It’s hard to imagine someday this delicate creature will walk around, talk on a cell phone, drive a car. “This little monster clawed his way out of there.”

  “Do you think his ears look like mine?” she asks with a yawn.

  “Definitely. Poor guy.”

  She shoves me, but weakly. “Where’s Bo?”

  “Went to make a call, I think.” It’s been a good half hour since the doctor snipped the umbilical chord. There are nurses bustling around, the same ones who whisked Drew off to get cleaned up, then brought him back in a tidy little blanket. Bo slipped out during all the commotion, scowling at his phone.

  Five minutes later, he’s standing at the foot of Zoe’s bed, his face white.

  “What is it, sweetie?” Zoe grips Drew a little tighter. Her words come out hoarse with fear. “Is there something wrong with Drew? Did the doctor say—?”

  “No! Nothing like that.” He doesn’t smile, though. The muscles in his shoulders are bunched tight, his lips pursed as if trying to hold something back.

  For a long moment, we wait. Bo walks to the window and stares out, saying nothing.

  “Do you want me to leave?” If he says yes I’ll never forgive him. I’ve been with Zoe through this whole thing; he disappeared at every opportunity. Pretty sure I caught him playing “Angry Birds” between contractions.

  His gaze falls on me, and something shifts in his expression. “No. You should hear this.”

  “Hear what?” Zoe’s voice is sharp. Drew squirms in her arms.

  He hesitates. “I’m not sure I should tell you right now.”

  “Just say it!” She’s threadbare, tense.

  He leans against the windowsill, his gaze darting from her face to mine and back again. “It’s Raul. He’s…”

  “What?” Zoe prompts again, agitated. “He’s what?”

  “Dead.”

  A stunned silence fills the room. The last of the nurses bustles out, leaving an even more profound void. Zoe and I continue staring at Bo, trying to understand. She opens her mouth, closes it again.

  Finally, I find my voice. “How do you know Raul?” It’s not the first question that occurs to me, obviously, but I’m not sure I’m ready to hear how he died. Zoe never mentioned a connection between Bo and Raul. It seems like a good place to start.

  “We were roommates in Chicago.” Bo runs a hand over his face. The light from the window hits him directly. I notice his bloodshot eyes, his chalky white complexion. “We shared an apartment for a couple years. Sorry, I’m having a hard time taking this in.”

  “What happened?” Tears stream down Zoe’s face.

  Bo looks at his shoes, then locks eyes with me. “He was murdered.”

  SAM

  I’ve always liked Halloween. The ghouls’ holiday. I wander the streets of your neighborhood, enjoying the wintry twilight. The breeze tastes like snow. Decorations adorn staid houses. The big Colonial on the corner of Cherry and Walnut splashed out for blow-up ghosts, plastic tombstones, and hairy spiders. Most of your neighbors have more class, though. They opt for gauzy spiderwebs, dried-leaf wreaths. As I walk, jack-o’-lanterns leer at me from tidy porches.

  Vivienne used to say the veil between the living and dead is thinnest on Halloween. Just one example of her pseudo–new age, watered-down Indian mysticism. I wonder about that as I walk, even though I’d rather not. I study the shadows for signs. Nothing’s stirring. The dead stay dead.

  I hear footsteps behind me and turn to see Vivienne limping in my wake. I shake my head in disgust. She’s always had a gift for appearing when I think about her too much, one of the many reasons I try not to think about her at all.

  “How’s my baby?” She looks marginally better than the last time I saw her. That’s not saying much. She was week-old roadkill that day in the library—buzzing with flies and crawling with maggots. Now she’s month-old roadkill, just desiccated enough to be tolerable.

  I shove my hands deeper into my pockets and walk faster. “I thought you were going to stay away for six months. Wasn’t that your promise?”

  “I got a friend in town. Staying at his place. I like it here.”

  It’s hard to believe there are still Motherfuckers, given the state of her, but I guess some guys are just that desperate.

  “Can’t help it if I run into you sometimes.” She’s limping hard, swallowing the pain.

  I slow down. Something about this woman still gets to me. “What happened to your foot?”

  “Nothing. Sprained ankle.”

  “You should go to the clinic. Have it looked at.”

  “Waya—”

  “Sam!” I snap.

  She starts to protest, stops herself. “I had a dream about you last night. Not a good one.”

  “Yeah? Thought your dream catchers were supposed to take care of those.”

  “I’m serious.” She stops walking. “It was just like the one I had when Eva died.”

  That stops me. I turn to face her. There’s a vein throbbing in her forehead, a thin, blue pulse. Her dark eyes hold mine. Vivienne’s grandmother was a medicine woman in South Carolina. Her elisi. Vivienne claims both she and her elisi were “born without their veil broken.” As far as I can tell, this means she deludes herself into thinking she’s psychic. She doesn’t like that word, though. Her particular brand of Native mysticism eschews such labels. It’s all bullshit. Right now, though, I don’t like the look in her eyes—pure animal fear.

  “I’m sorry you had a bad dream,” I say through clenched teeth.

  She picks at a scab on her hand, her fingers working like pinchers. “What have you done, Waya? Tell me.”

  “Nothing.” I look around, take a step closer. “Stop following me. I’m fine.”

  “I know you.” Her dark eyes harden, the fear solidifying into something else. A threat. “The anisgina follow you everywhere.”

  I heard the word enough as a kid to know what it means: ghosts.

  I grab her bony arm. Like everything else about her, it feels breakable. “I don’t want to see you. Ever again. You understand?”

  She wrenches free of my grip and hobbles a couple steps back, almost tripping on the curb. “You can’t run from them.”

  “Shut up, Vivienne.” I shake my head. “How much?”

  She chews her lip, says nothing. God, this woman.

  I run a hand through my hair, growling in frustration. “Jesus! How much? Just say it.”

  “A hundred?” She gets the look she always does when it comes to handouts—meek but rapacious, like a starving kitten.

  I pull out the eighty-three bucks I stole from Raul’s wallet. I’ll get more pawning his shit, so I can spare the cash. Stuffing it into her scarred hand, I lean in close, forcing her to look into my eyes. “This is it. No more. Leave town. You got it?”

  She squirrels away the cash and nods.

  * * *

  I get Maxine’s email the first week in November. A Tuesday. Election day.

  When I fire up my laptop and see her message sitting there, my gut twists in a prophetic cramp. It’s got a neutral-enough subject heading. Still, the words strike me as cold, inhospitable, a snowy plane in Greenland.

  From: Maxine Katz

  To: Sam Grist

  Subject: Your manuscript

  Dear Sam,

  Your novel has been read by my assistant and myself. We agree it is too dark for my list. I wish you luck in finding the right home.

&nb
sp; Best,

  Maxine Katz

  Literary Agent

  I stand and pace the room. This is crazy. My book is good. I know it’s good. My sweat is in that manuscript, my guts, my heart. It’s a work of fucking art, and this bitch-faced cunt says it’s “too dark”? The fuck does that mean, “too dark”? Did she even read it? Or is she trying to say her cunty little assistant (her name has to be Hannah!) read it while playing a game of “Grand Theft Auto” with her boyfriend? I can see Hannah so clearly. Hot, but in a slutty-nerdy way, the chick who’ll smoke a bowl and let you fuck her in the ass. She wears glasses and she reads graphic novels, so she’s kind of bookish, but she also has a vibrator in her nightstand and she does Jell-O shots with her girlfriends, and she totally had an affair with her roommate back at Yale. This is the little trust-fund bitch who read my book and said no. She barely got past the first page, but her boyfriend wanted her to smoke another bowl and she was losing at “Grand Theft Auto,” so she scribbled “pass” on a Post-it note and got back to her debauchery.

  I would line up all the Hannahs of this world and shoot them, if only I could. Ridding the planet of Hannahs would be a definite step in the right direction. An act of heroism. The line would be long. Hannahs live in every city around the world. There’s at least one in every coffee shop. They multiply like cockroaches at Harvard and Stanford and Brown. There’s an army of Hannahs out there. They all deserve to die.

  I slam my laptop shut and pace some more. The walls of my studio feel too close, too white. The air’s thick with failure. The dirty dishes crowding around my sink glare at me in reproach. Did you and Maxine plan this? Is it some kind of test, like Raul? Am I supposed to prove once again how much I want into your world? Is this my cue to launch some grand gesture, something public and over-the-top, the writer’s version of John Cusack standing outside Ione Skye’s window with a boom box blaring Peter Gabriel?

  No, you can’t be part of this.

  It’s Maxine. The lazy whore. She didn’t even read my manuscript. How dare she call herself a professional? It’s Maxine’s skanky little assistant, a lazy cum-dumpster with no taste and no real passion for literature, just an Ivy League education she slept through, and a trust fund that allows her to survive in New York “working” for Maxine Katz, not reading manuscripts and venturing opinions about them anyway.

  The picture that forms in my mind makes my skin feel too tight, makes my brain pulse inside my skull. Hannah, sipping an overpriced latte, hungover, still a little high from her wake-and-bake session with Trent, her mouth-breathing boyfriend, handing over my manuscript with a bored expression. “It’s too dark for your list,” she says. “Readers don’t want to be that depressed.”

  Every relationship has tests. Ask anyone. No matter how much you love someone, there will be moments that force you to work harder, to prove your dedication. Someday, you and I will laugh about this. You will have a new agent, and I will have the Best Agent in Town, someone young and hungry and brilliant, with sharklike instincts and beautiful young assistants who know what they’re talking about. Maxine will be a homeless crack whore we sometimes give money to when we run into her in Central Park, and Hannah will be dead. We’ll lie in bed in our spacious loft, spreading jam on toast, drinking coffee and laughing about that day when Maxine rejected my debut novel. You’ll frown a little as you chew, thinking of how far she’s fallen, and say, “Poor Maxine.” But I’ll show no mercy. “Fuck her. She’s got no taste.” You’ll cover your mouth, trying not to spray toast crumbs everywhere as you giggle, and I’ll dive on you, kissing your creamy white neck, losing myself in the porcelain planes of your body.

  I can’t stay here right now. I need to be near you, near your things. I check your email, make sure you haven’t cancelled class. You’ve got Modern American Literature in room 5233. You’ll be there until two. I grab my keys and hurry out the door.

  * * *

  I’m staring at your fridge, which is plastered with photos. They’re almost all of you and Zoe. There are a few of you wrapping an arm around an old man. That must be your father. I’ve gleaned from your books, your bio, your interviews, that your mother died when you were twelve. You were raised by your father and a series of stepmothers, none of whom made the cut for your fridge.

  Zoe’s the main person in your life.

  From your emails, I know Zoe had her baby a week and a half ago. You’ve only seen her once since then. She’s overwhelmed. You don’t like babies. All of your protagonists eschew motherhood in favor of other, more selfish pursuits. This is just another sign we belong together, since I would rather hammer nails into my cranium than suffer a screaming infant.

  You’re alone. You feel abandoned. I can sense it in your home. There’s a sad, crooked quality to the way the dish towel hangs from your oven door. The food in your cupboards is meager, spare, a sure sign you’re avoiding the grocery store. You’re living off takeout Chinese and frozen ravioli. I want to cook for you, make you my grandfather’s Irish stew and buttermilk biscuits, a meal so hearty and life-affirming, you’ll eat three bowls and ask for more, sop up the last of it with your second biscuit slathered in butter.

  We’re not there yet. I’m getting ahead of myself. Love can’t be rushed. If you came home and found me in your kitchen stirring a pot of stew, you’d call the cops. That’s the crazy, backward shit that makes me want to break things, you know? You let Raul in here, let him fuck you, even though he’s got no idea who you are or what you need. Then I show up, just wanting to feed you a decent meal, dying to soothe your aching solitude, and I’m the criminal. I bet I know more about you than your own father. I know what you need. Yet, I’m an intruder in the eyes of the law. Even in your eyes, until I can prove otherwise.

  I can’t think about that now; it makes me too sad.

  For now, I have to satisfy myself with the little things—roving your home like a ghost while you lecture in McKinley Hall. I can see you commanding the room, telling stories, weaving your magic. Meanwhile, I’m here, touching your counters, fondling your couch, stroking your two cats. They like me, especially the black one. Her long, slender body shimmies against my hand as I bend over and caress her. I know from your emails with your vet they’re called Emily and Charlotte. After the Brontës. I’m guessing the black one’s Emily, the tabby Charlotte. Only a black cat could dream up Wuthering Heights. The tabby’s more of a Jane Eyre type.

  Emily follows me as I make my way upstairs and into your bedroom. She leaps onto the bed. I run a hand over your white cotton bedspread. She slinks behind me as I open the door to your walk-in closet, run my fingers over the silks and cashmeres, the wools, the denims. When I reach into your hamper and pluck a pair of black lace panties from its depths, Emily blinks up at me. I hold the cotton crotch close to my face and breathe in, never breaking her gaze. She gives me a baleful look. I stuff the filmy fabric into my pocket.

  Back downstairs, I glance at the antique clock on your mantel. It’s almost three. Where did the time go? Jesus! I take one last, furtive look around. An orchid in your kitchen window catches my eye. One of its petals floats to the floor, a plaintive shedding. I take that as a sign. It’s parched. Neglected. Abandoned. Like you, it needs to be saved. You are not a nurturer, Kate. When we’re together, I will do the cooking, I will care for the plants, I will buy Emily and Charlotte their treats. You’ll be the naughty child, the one who leaves her coffee cup in the laundry room, just a few sips left in it, enough to grow mold. I will enjoy spoiling you. Starting right now.

  I forage in the cabinets until I find a glass. I fill it halfway and pour a bit of water into the orchid’s pot. It perks up a little. The tiny flower face smiles up at me, grateful. Your orchid and I share a moment of camaraderie. I pluck the fallen petal from the floor and carefully secure it in my shirt pocket. Your orchid knows I belong here, just as Charlotte and Emily know. It’s only a matter of time before you know it, too.

  I search in the cupboards until I find a bag of food. I pour jus
t a few bites into the cats’ bowls. They fall on the food, chomping like savages. I stroke Emily as she eats, enjoying the sinuous feel of her spine beneath my fingers.

  There’s a key turning in your door. Adrenaline shoots through my body so fast I get a head rush.

  For a second, my impulse is to stand my ground. I long to greet you and welcome you in and cook for you and ask about your day and massage the kinks from your taut shoulders and scold Emily for jumping onto your lap when it’s your turn to be petted, to be loved.

  But of course none of that can happen, not yet. If you find me like this, I’ll be suspect—worse than suspect. I’ll be caught. And even though I know in my heart there’s nothing sinister about my presence here, you don’t. You won’t see it that way.

  I don’t blame you. My impatience with the distance between us grows more intense every second, though.

  You’re in the foyer now, closing the door. Any moment you’ll turn and see me. My heart pounds against my rib cage like a crazed dog throwing itself against a fence. I dash up the stairs, willing my boots to stay silent. If you could see me now, you’d be impressed. I’ve got stealth. My criminal instincts are honed. The good girl in you can’t help but be turned on by that. Maybe if you catch me, you’ll find it sexy.

  But no. Not going to happen.

  You can’t see me.

  I have to disappear.

  Everything’s riding on this. My pulse races.

  Without thinking, I run into the first room at the top of the stairs: the bathroom. Your smell is heavy in here, a tropical storm of Kateness. I creep inside the tub and, careful not to make a sound, pull the shower curtain closed.

  I hear you walking up the stairs. You’re humming. It sounds like “Wild Night” by Van Morrison—one of my favorite songs. That has to mean something.

  There’s a preoccupied cadence to your footsteps. I picture you flipping through mail, your brow furrowed in that tiny apostrophe of concentration. You probably have your reading glasses perched on the end of your nose. I ache for you. I peek around the curtain just enough to catch a glimpse of your slender bare feet reaching the top of the staircase and making a left toward your bedroom. I hold my breath, letting the curtain fall back into place.