by Kate Wisel
“Hi, Woman,” I say, leaning against the dusty wooden stairway.
“Oh!” she says, reaching for her glasses. “I want to see you better.”
Rima taught me to talk to strangers. Every time a new neighbor moves into the U of apartments, which is practically once a month, she pushes me across the walk to knock on their door. To shake their hand. She watches from behind our screen door, like I’m doing it for her.
“Raffa,” Benny’s mom slurs, slow as the hand she drags to her heart. “I’m happy you’re here.”
“I’ll be up in Benny’s room,” I say, playing along.
The upstairs bathroom is airless. I run the sink, flipping open the mirror to find the Sesame Street toothbrush Benny bought for me at CVS. Across the hall, Benny’s dad is watching CNN in his room. I know because he is always there, the door cracked enough to see the smoke drift like weather over his head. The only time I’ve seen Benny’s dad out of the chair was last spring, when Benny and I skipped class to race up the stairs, tripping over jeans and belts. A half hour later, Benny’s dad cleared his throat in the attic doorway. I stopped midstep so Benny tugged me too hard, and I stumbled.
“Shit,” I said. Benny gripped my knuckles tighter, squeezing in some small part of my embarrassment.
“Hey, Pops,” Benny said. He was beaming.
Before I can dash up the stairs, Benny’s dad’s face appears in the crack. I’m an animal stuck in the road. His pale eyes study me, a flash of Benny.
“How are you doing, Raffa?” he whispers.
I can’t think, so I say, “My mom kicked me out.”
“Ah,” he says, rubbing the back of his head. My eyes shift. The branches above him are still outside his window.
Up in the attic, purple carpet, badly burnt from fallen ashes. A Bruce Lee poster hangs on the wall, next to a road map of the human heart. Benny’s bed sits in the corner where the ceiling slants. There’s a skylight over it, so if you lie down at night, you can watch your own episode of Planet Earth in this soundless rotation. I skim my finger over the smooth wood of Benny’s dresser. I blow and watch the dust lose itself in the air.
I sit in front of the floor-length windows. Nobody can see me, but I can see everything. On one side, the radio towers out in Dedham; on the other, a faded view of the Boston skyline. I sit for a long time, waiting for something beautiful to happen, but it just gets darker.
I wait till it’s totally dark to flick on the light, then pull open the bottom drawer of Benny’s dresser. Under crumpled T-shirts are Benny’s bottles of pills. I make a straight line of them on the carpet. Two of them hold tiny blue pills that rattle like Tic Tacs. The other is oversized with the label peeled off. White OxyContin dust chalks up the inside.
I stole the whole bottle once. We were having Serena and Mickey over, playing kings on the carpet.
“Two is for you!” I said, making my hand a gun aimed at Benny as he took a swig from his forty. Benny flipped a seven. We swung up our arms. Halfway through, Benny and Mickey crushed pills on Benny’s desk with his school ID, then blew three fat lines as I pretended to braid Serena’s tangled hair.
Benny found the bottle in my backpack the next morning, hidden in a sock so they wouldn’t make a sound.
“Why are you so nosy?” Benny said as he pulled on a beater.
“Why are you so secretive?” I said.
“Stop going through my stuff, Raffa. I mean it. Those aren’t yours.” Benny ran his hands through his gelled hair. I propped myself up.
“They’re not yours, either. They’re Woman’s.”
“Relax,” Benny said.
But I couldn’t. Late at night I’d twitch from sleep to the sound of Benny creaking down the stairs. Woman kept her pills on the coffee table in a clear bin like a jewelry box. Separated into seven slots. Some of the pills were tiny and green as earrings, others pink ovals, the rest round and white as Alka-Seltzer. I’d sit by the stairs and listen so hard I thought I could hear the yawn of the box opening.
Back on Benny’s bed, I tore my arm free from his grip.
“Stop hiding things,” I said. “I know you.”
“What’s there to worry about, then?” Benny said. He wrapped his arms around me even though he was the one shivering.
“You’re shaking,” I said.
“You’re pretty,” he said. “So pretty it hurts.”
I bit into his shoulder, salty with sweat. Benny stared at the floor and grinned, but it happened too slowly. Everything about Benny had become slow. His eyelids as they fell while driving. Even his skin looked slow, grainy and static as an old TV. The smell from his neck like a rotten vegetable drawer. He’d itch his arms like a kid. Eat discounted candy corn from the big bag.
All spring I calculated the missing pills. Forty-five down to twenty-six. Twenty-six down to eleven. Eleven to none. I’d know there was none when he’d pace around the room, then tear back to punch the wall without apologizing to me after. He’d stay home in bed, puking off the side or, worse, missing.
I get under Benny’s covers and study the worn black letters of Woman’s real name before the label got torn. I think about Benny’s gap teeth and how when people die in movies, the camera swings up across the sky and sweeps through blowing leaves so they are everywhere. I don’t feel Benny anywhere.
I wake clutching Benny’s pillow. I refold all his T-shirts, roll the sleeves army-style like Benny would. I hang his button-ups, smooth out towels from his laundry. I line up his Vans, stick my hand in a dress shoe and find a torn wrapper. Suboxone, Rx only. In his desk drawer, chewed pencils and a spiral notebook. It’s colored in on the first page with outlines of pinup girls and ghouls. I flip to the center where Benny writes over everything twice in bold lettering. I search for my name but get stuck on Benny’s handwriting, all caps, severe.
WOMAN IS OUT OF SCRIPTS!!! It’s December. He drove to Downtown Crossing in Pops’s Jeep and found a homeless guy selling red roses on the shoulder. Three needles for thirty bucks if the bum taught him how to shoot up, with the promise of Benny taking him to the ER for the bad rash on his leg. Benny said shooting up wasn’t as hard as he’d thought. He found a vein—this, the part that hurt most—ten orgasms at once.
Pots clatter downstairs. The sunny smell of burnt bacon hangs in the air. My stomach’s empty, open, a cave. I slide my hands through the sleeves of Benny’s button-up, drift downstairs. Woman is by the stove and swings back when she sees me standing in the doorway.
“You scared me!” she says with a spatula in her hand. Her black hair is clipped at the top of her head and piled high like a squawking bird could fly out. She wears fuchsia lipstick and a silky nightgown that skims her ankles. Benny’s dad is at the kitchen table with the paper.
“You scared yourself,” he says. I sit across from him and drum my fingers against the vinyl seat. Woman almost dances to the table with the pan, prying neon eggs onto my plate.
“Thank you,” I say, holding a fork.
“Benny loves bacon,” she says, heading to Benny’s dad’s plate. He sets the paper down, and for a second we stare at each other.
“That’s enough,” he says, and Woman thinks he means the eggs.
“Cha-cha-cha,” she says, dropping the pan into the sink.
Benny’s dad takes a deep breath as she shimmies between us.
“We had a dog once,” Woman says. “Did you know that, Raffa? But”—Woman smiles but her eyes go blurry—“we had to give the dog away. I loved that dog.” Woman looks at Benny’s dad, her smile warped.
Benny’s dad holds a napkin over his mouth and says, “Eat up.”
That night, I wait until I can’t see the radio towers in the dark. I go downstairs, same way Benny used to creak through the night. Woman’s slippers are kicked up on the recliner and glowing in the dark. Her soft snore makes a sucking sound. I can make out the legs of the coffee table, the giant box of Woman’s pills left open. Oxys are like mints, round and white. I’m holding four in my fist as I
retrace my steps back up the stairs.
The next morning, I wake up with the pills still in my palm and dry-swallow all four. When I go downstairs to pee I stay on the toilet, my toenails half green since the last time I painted them. I stand in Benny’s dad’s doorway, where I see he is breaking kosher and watching the History Channel.
I’m high as hell. Fat bees hum lazily under my skin. Pops looks at me. I’m honey-warm and brave. Gray smoke twirls from his slack fingers, between the wilderness of stacked books and upholstered chairs. A big window seat facing the backyard surprises me. I hold on to the doorway. I’m wearing Benny’s Bob Marley T-shirt and no bra.
“What’s happening, Raffa?” Benny’s dad says. I open my mouth to say something, but my throat sounds out a gasp.
“You want to watch this with me?” I nod. I sit next to him on the edge of the bed by his armchair. I skate my fingers through my hair and leave some pieces in my face. We’re both quiet, volume low on a documentary about the Civil War. He holds his hands out wide on either arm of the chair with his legs crossed.
Benny’s dad is going bald. I can see the outline of where all his hair used to be when the screen flashes gunpowder explosives all over us. It goes dark again, but when the gun cracks, I see the wrinkles that edge his eyes. His eyelashes long and soft like Benny’s were. Like they’re meant for collecting dust. I reach for Benny’s dad’s hand.
“Can you kiss me?” I ask. I’m frantic. I think I’m crying. Benny’s dad doesn’t flinch. He turns to me, both hands cupping my cheeks. I search him, his lips, half hidden by a longer beard than Benny’s. He takes me toward his chest and kisses my forehead. Now I know I’m crying. We stay right like this.
Then I pull away from him.
I wander over to the window and hug my knees. The swing set looks small from way up here. I feel him watching me from his armchair.
I keep my head against the glass and say, “Did you know?”
Benny’s dad keeps his cool. “No,” he said. “People hide things.”
“I knew,” I say, fingering the cord on the blinds. Then I say something I’ve said before. “What’s wrong with Woman?”
For the first time all week, I miss Rima. Six blocks away and alone.
Rima, I’m going back up to Benny’s room for the last time. See Benny and me? It’s freshman year. I’m on the bed with my cheek in my palm and he’s standing above me wearing a beanie. You’d kill me, but I kneel up against his hips and twist it backwards. Neither of us blinks. Benny glides on top of me and cups both palms under my neck, then smooths back the hair from my eyes. He unzips my jeans.
“Will I bleed?” I whisper, and Benny whispers back, “You might.”
He says, “Don’t worry,” his fingers tracing circles on my hips.
“Ow,” I say, searching Benny’s eyes. I hold on to my neck where my heart beats and grit my teeth. He shifts my hips over the sheets and tries from a different angle. My thighs goose-bump in the cold but are feverish with heat. I push his chest back slowly, impossibly, his knuckles making indents on the bed as he crouches over me.
“It hurts,” I say, sweat leaking down my back. Benny takes deep, desperate breaths.
“Do you want to stop?” he asks. I shake my head, Rima, because I didn’t want to be like you. Asleep when the sun’s out, afraid to cross the walk.
Benny walks naked to his dresser, then yanks open the drawer. He comes back to bed with a closed fist, two OxyContins in his palm when he opens it.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“So it won’t hurt.”
WHEN I CALL, YOU ANSWER
OUTSIDE THE RAMADA, I’M engaging in a perfect parallel-parking job, mouthing Whoa daddy as I reverse into the spot. I’m cautious with my bumper. It’s dented as the cans of beans Rima buys on the discount rack at Shaw’s. The dent is from the last accident this year, my fault, so now this course. You know something is wrong when you are pushing thirty and have been forced to take a course on a Saturday. I rear-ended a Mexican woman’s Kia after she stopped short at a yellow light.
“Lo siento,” she said from the curb, then cried into her hands.
The cop spat onto the grass and said, “Do you speak English at all?” knowing full well I was the one he’d need to speak to. I looked back at the crying woman and thought, I’m going to lose my license.
I despise cops, as well as teachers who think they are cops. In the last row of the driving course, I sit high-school style, twirling a number two. The tsk-tsk of the clock. The driving instructor looks exactly as you’d think. Like he’s only ever read a book on the toilet. I ponder walking up to him, saying how I know he’s been divorced, too. Why don’t we both go home and sleep, hope we don’t wake up? Exactly eight hours later I’m on my way to Rima’s, disregarding every yellow light in JP. The best part about her apartment complex is the straight spaces. No parallel parking.
Nothing has changed about the kitchen, T.J.Maxx foldout table against the wall, the brick facade of the neighboring apartments crowding the window above the sink. The damp smell of oily dishrags and uncapped spices. Rima’s in her little tracksuit with the rhinestones on the butt. She stirs goulash, then shakes so much paprika that it makes a cloud around us and singes my nostrils. I’m sitting like I never would have when I was younger, because I thought we were two women who looked alike and that’s where it ended. Her, asleep on the couch, and me, running out. Rima turns back, gesticulating with the spoon.
“You gain weight,” she says.
“Thanks, Rima,” I say, pinching the flab that sits loose above my jeans.
“You gain weight, you lose weight,” she says. “You gain weight, you lose.”
“Sounds like balance,” I say. Rima shakes her head, ladles stew into a bowl.
“You need to go out,” she says. “I know someone.”
“I’m good,” I say. Ever since me and Mick got divorced, I’ve been coming home to eat from bowls, to take a break from what it is that has me feeling like a lost girl at the mall. Sometimes I stay the night and we sleep in her bed like when it was ours. I sleep dreamless, numb as Novocain through gums. When I wake up, I feel wrong and backwards, the same lost girl at the mall.
“You’re good?” she says, scoffing. “You sit in that apartment with Serena eating cold pizza.” She points the stained spoon at my head. “You need a job.”
“I don’t disagree,” I say, spooning all the beef together for one giant bite.
“I have something,” she says. “You go to the interview.”
I’m pushing thirty and now is the right time to obey Rima. What I’m thinking is, Do I have to buy office pants at the Gap? There are primal-colored blouses on the racks, albino-white mannequins frozen midstride. I hide in the neutral section, tug a size two out from the bottom, and topple the stack.
“Can I help you?” a woman in a headset says. “I think you’re looking at the wrong size.”
She folds the pants methodically, keeps her eyes glued to my waist. I wonder if degradation was part of her training.
“I don’t need help,” I say. “I’m excellent.”
Newbury Street on a Monday morning in March. Men in gray suits sporting backpacks, coffee splashing down their fists. I’m a honeybee, circling and zipping through the crowded streets for a space. I swerve like I missed an exit on the highway, an inch from running a biker off the road. The woman wears no helmet and has a blond child strapped to her back. Does she think this is Europe? Picking up speed in reverse, I nail a spot, tap a BMW’s bumper, then reapply my lipstick in the rearview.
Inside the building, hushed voices echo off the swirled marble. The security guard motions for me to take off my bracelets and to drop my purse into the bin.
“Merhaba,” he says, his dark eyes flashing from my bun to my heels as I gather back my things.
The building looks like a bank filled with my relatives. The security guy who checked me out resembles my cousin in Chekka, and the secretary before Selim’s office look
s like my aunt, dark-lipped and plump with a sugary smell coming off her neck.
Unlike my aunt, she’s friendly. She swivels and grasps my hand. “Habiibi. I’m Lara.”
“I’m Raffa,” I say.
“You’re here to meet Selim, yes?”
Selim’s office is nothing like a bank. The carpeting is bright and there’s an actual tea tray on his desk with turned-in picture frames and little metal horses that follow each other as if unaware they are headed off the edge. There’s a smaller desk in the corner, empty and bare. Selim is standing next to it, and for a second I think he looks like David Blaine, short and dark-skinned with that magician’s aura. He opens his mouth to say something, a gaunt and hungry look in his eyes, like he’s calculating my ability to notice how he’ll disappear.
“Sit down,” he says, gesturing to the desk. I sit.
“Actually, get up,” he says.
We do the reverse commute past security. Selim’s got a swift stride, his sleek suit jacket slung over his shoulder. But I’m taller than him in my heels and follow closely behind on the crowded street.
“Sit down,” he says again. I shimmy like an idiot. We’re in Sonsie in front of the garage-sized window that looks out over Newbury Street, and the waitress is setting down menus in front of us.
“Give me an Amstel,” Selim says. I let my eyes drop down over the menu. “She will, too. You’re thirsty, no?”
I imagine the time is 9:30 a.m. Rima would be appalled. No one in my family drinks.
“Where are you from, Raffa?” Selim says.
“Jamaica Plain.”
“Where are you from, I mean, in Lebanon?” He sits back in his chair, smirking, his inky eyes reflective, unsearchable.
“Oh,” I say. “I grew up in Jamaica Plain, but my family is from outside Beirut.”
“I see,” he says. “And what makes you want to work for me?”
