Lingering

by Melissa Simonson

  “She’s around the three of us all the time. She could have taken the frequency of our own blinking into consideration and recalibrated her own.”

  “Good point.” He drummed his fingers against the window ledge. “It’s still weird.”

  “Margot never did anything like that?”

  He turned to face me, furrows carved into his brow. “When she was older, yeah. She started to mimic normal human fidgeting. Crossing her legs, playing with her hair.”

  “So maybe that’s all it is with Carissa.”

  “Maybe. But Margot only ever did that when she was around other people. We’d watch her on the cameras when she was alone. She never fidgeted unless she had an audience physically in front of her.”

  “Well, she must know we’re watching her now. She’s not stupid, she knows we can see through the glass.” I looked back at Carissa, following the pen’s slow and circular progress through her deft fingers, the way her eyes grazed the ceiling, how the muscle in her jaw working made me sure she was biting the inside of her bottom lip. She could have been sitting at our kitchen table, working on some write-up for one of the magazines she freelanced for. Any second now, she’d toss down her pen, lock her fingers above her head in a deep stretch, her spine curving back like an archer’s bow, and call, Ben? Can we go to Christie’s on your lunch break, I’m getting nowhere with this article and I want anything with vodka.

  And I would have said yes, I always said yes. That was the best part about working from home, that I could spend three hours downing beer in a dive bar and nobody would know, so long as I kept responding on my company’s messaging app.

  Carissa had done our favorite Christie’s waitress’s wedding makeup in early July. Wouldn’t accept payment for doing so, called it a wedding gift, but of course she’d given her an actual gift anyway. A set of copper pots, or something, I couldn’t remember. She’d just made me sign the card. I hoped Shanice was using them well, those copper pots and pans. I hadn’t been to Christie’s in a long time.

  A jab to my shoulder set me off balance, and I turned my head to find Nick’s finger, poised to strike again.

  “You look a long way away. What’re you thinking about?”

  “Copper pots.”

  He choked back a snort and gestured at the door. “Great. Well, after you.”

  Carissa flicked an uninterested glance at the pair of us as we entered the room, but I had a feeling it was a ruse, unless the fact that she’d messaged me on Google Hangouts as I stood just outside the door was a coincidence.

  “Is it weird to see me without makeup?” she asked, as I settled myself into the chair across from hers.

  She had a knack for catching me flat-footed with seemingly random questions, the same way she’d been in life.

  “I saw you without makeup all the time. We lived together, remember?”

  She pushed aside what was likely the millionth rendering of Dexter. “Which do you prefer?”

  “I never had a preference. I liked both. You looked a lot younger without makeup.” Much sweeter and more innocent, too, and I didn’t have to worry about smearing her lipstick when her face had been naked.

  “Sometimes you got this weird look on your face when I was experimenting with different colors and palettes. I could always tell when I’d gone overboard, your face would give it away, even though you never outright said anything.”

  Flipping through hazy memories of her hunched over her vanity, I wondered how many times I had come up behind her as she applied all that crap. Thousands? Every once in a while, she’d turn around and leave me dumbfounded, grappling for a response that wouldn’t get me in trouble. Flamingo-bright shadows that looked like pink eye, shiny blues and greens that had me thinking of extra-terrestrials.

  She must have texted one of her friends about that alleged face I made when she went crazy with experimentation. She’d never mentioned it to me when she was alive.

  “You must have liked caking that stuff on,” Nick offered, leaning back in his chair, arms folded across his stomach. “You uploaded countless videos on YouTube. Any particular reason why you felt like you had to wear all that shit?”

  “Uh, have you ever met your girlfriend?” I snapped, stung on Carissa’s behalf. “She wears a shitload of makeup. Could probably double as a mime.”

  He laughed, tilting his head from side to side. “Yeah, I can see it now that you mention it. My question still stands, though.”

  She considered him for a moment, rolling the pen between her thumb and index finger. “I was very insecure when I was younger. I liked how makeup could transform a face, hide flaws, enhance features. I could turn myself into anything I wanted with an arsenal of good makeup. I could transform other people with it, too. Maybe that was my little way of playing God. It’s not as impressive as your attempt to do so, I’ll grant you, but I suppose I’ll never be as ambitious as you.”

  He flashed her his werewolf smile, the one he wore when he was truly amused, wet canines glistening under all that antiseptic lighting, dried white toothpaste caked into the corner of his lip. “Is that what you think I’m doing here? Playing God?”

  She smiled back, just as big as his, but miles more disturbing. I’d never seen Carissa wear a smile like that, and I never wanted to again.

  “I don’t think it’s what you’re doing. I know it’s what you’re doing.” She shrugged one shoulder, ran her hand through the hair waving down her back. “But I guess we’ve all got to have hobbies, right?”

  “God, I love her,” Nick said, as he walked me down the hallway later. “She’s so snappy. Margot never said stuff like that. I can see why you were so obsessed with her.”

  “She was only snappy because you were being an ass,” I said, plodding up the staircase, picturing Nick’s face beneath my shoes with each heavy step. I pulled out my phone to check the message Carissa had sent earlier and balked when I read it. Feeling daring enough to pay me another solo visit?

  Hell no. Not when Nick had made such a fuss over the frequency of her blinks.

  “It’s pretty sexy when women are mad, isn’t it?” He stopped after I’d ascended the staircase, leaning against the wall.

  I didn’t answer, just looked down at him from the top stair, the blood in my carotid simmering.

  “Well, to each his own, I guess.” He gave me a stupid little salute, turned on his heel, and headed back down the hallway. I stood there watching until the heel of his shoe disappeared behind the door to the room Carissa was sequestered inside as the lights above the main floor flickered feebly.

  I t was amazing how loud my house was when it was ostensibly silent. When Dexter wasn’t yowling, when I wasn’t typing or watching TV, slitting open mail or making a half-assed dinner, the constancy of all the little noises I hardly noticed sounded deafening.

  The buzz of the refrigerator vibrated beneath my feet as I stood there in the kitchen, and I wondered if that slow, steady ticking of the clock on the wall had ever been that piercing before, if I’d always felt it tick as though it had taken up residence inside my own body, rattling bones, in synch with my heartbeats, like it was the metronome of my pulse. The dishwasher hummed to life, water sloshing in its wide belly, steam hissing out the sides, the rapid clinking of the cutlery within setting my teeth on edge. Surrounded by machines everywhere I went, not just at 311 Emery.

  The coffeemaker gasped out a few puffs of steam, and then my laptop on the table joined the fray, whirring as the screen turned black and went into sleep mode.

  Did Carissa make noises like that when she was alone in that dark room for however long it took her to ‘fall asleep’?

  I pictured her in there, wide eyes open, the green light on her charging cord staining the side of her face, alone but for the other machines in there that didn’t have voices or simulated personalities to keep her company. It was horrible to imagine, almost as bad as when her coffin had been lowered into the freshly dug earth of her grave. I couldn’t stop thinking of her aband
oned in there, packed away in a box. The rest of us would walk away from the funeral, but she’d stay there forever. How long would it take for the embalming fluid to wear off? Had her skin started to blacken? I’d always loved how perfectly pink and plump her lips had been; those were probably peeling away from her teeth by now. The delicate flesh would be first to go, her eyelids disintegrating, exposing her eyeballs, a feast for maggots or worms or both. In a few years, there would be nothing left of her, nothing but bones in a dress, diamond earring studs littering the dirt on both sides of her skull. She’d be alone forever, nothing I could do.

  There was something I could do about the Carissa residing in the bowels of that old mill—bra-less, apparently; a detail that was never too far from my mind—but I couldn’t trust that Nick wouldn’t somehow find out about our late-night one-on-ones. He was way too smart not to keep his property, his business, locked down. If he didn’t know they had happened yet, he’d find out eventually.

  Knowing that didn’t exactly erase my guilt at turning her down, though.

  Nick seemed really suspicious of the fact that your blinking changed speed, I tapped into Hangouts. Raincheck this time? Trying to pull one over on him again so soon feels like poking the bear, you know?

  Her instantaneous reply: Depends on where you poke the bear. Spear him in the heart, and there’s nothing he can do.

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I slid the phone back into my pocket, closing my eyes.

  The clock ticked, the fridge buzzed, the dishwasher wheezed, and I stood there soaking in all the sounds before I thought they’d incite a mental break, make me rip the clock from the walls, beat the hissing coffeemaker to death with it. Knowing I’d regret murdering the coffeemaker in the morning, I trudged up the staircase and headed to bed.

  J

  ason stood to greet me as I pushed my way into a shabby little bar that used to be a brothel back in the day, hailing me from a couch beside the window. Carissa had loved this place, and its scandalous past. The best places have the sluttiest histories, she’d told me when she’d said she wanted to come here for our second date. I hadn’t been able to tell if she’d been kidding. She wasn’t.

  “Playing hooky today?” I asked as I sat in the overstuffed, musty armchair across from him. I’d been surprised when he texted me asking to meet up in the middle of the day.

  “Yeah, I used a vacation day.”

  I looked around the place, though it was pretty much empty, but for two men on stools up at the bar. “No Jackson?”

  He slid the beer he’d ordered me across the rickety little coffee table between us. “No Jackson. I wanted to ask you something, but it isn’t the type of thing you’d do over text.”

  “Oh…okay?” I took a sip of my beer, looking at him curiously. He seemed like he was coming down with something, his face pale and clammy, hollows beneath his bloodshot eyes. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I put my beer on the coffee table and leaned in closer. “What’s going on? You’re scaring me.”

  “I hope you don’t think I’m being insensitive, but I need your help.”

  “With what?”

  What little blood his sallow skin seemed to contain rushed into his cheeks. “I’m going to propose to Jackson. I—I was hoping you’d help me pick out a ring.”

  “Oh, my God.” I stood, rounded the coffee table, and pulled him into a hug as I sank onto the couch beside him. “Of course. I can’t promise I have great taste, but of course I’ll help you.”

  I felt his body go limp with relief as he gave me a tighter squeeze and pulled back. “I was so worried you’d think I was an asshole, asking for your help so soon after you were supposed to be married.”

  “Never. Are you kidding? Life goes on, it’s probably good for me to actually see that. I’m thrilled for you two.”

  He picked up his beer, knocked back a bigger sip than he’d intended, and slopped some of it down his shirt. His hand shook as he mopped it up with a bar napkin. “Ben?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was really looking forward to being your best man.”

  I felt myself deflate, sinking back into the couch, looking up into his wet blue eyes. “I was really looking forward to you being my best man, buddy.”

  Jason leaned back into the couch too, mirroring my stance. We didn’t say anything for a while, gazing up at the painting across the room of a skeletal ship, navigating ghostly green waters, a mermaid figurehead on its bow.

  “I would have put my all into your bachelor party, you know, even though Jackson said all it would take is strippers, beer, and candy.”

  I laughed. “Hmm. I’m not sure about the strippers. Whenever I see one, I can’t stop thinking what their life has been like to lead them to that kind of job. Probably because my mom had me so young. I always think they’re all struggling single mothers.”

  “You might be an anomaly of straight men, then.” He turned his head sideways, nudging me. “Would you be my best man? I can’t think of anybody else I want up there with me.”

  “Definitely. It’s an honor. I can’t wait to tell—uh, Dexter.” I’d meant to say Carissa, though I’d picked the stupidest substitute ever.

  Jason gaped at me for a few seconds before he laughed, throwing his head back to drain his beer. “Yes, I’m sure Dexter will be over the moon for us. Well I’ve got the whole day off, and Jackson’s at work. You mind going ring shopping with me now?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re not weirded out?”

  “Why would I be?”

  He shot me a patronizing look. “I don’t know if you remember that I’m gay, Ben. You’re going ring shopping with a gay man. People are going to assume we’re a couple.”

  “Oh.” I gave him an appraising sort of look and decided I could do far worse than Jason if I were a gay man. “I hadn’t even thought about that, but what the hell do I care?” I pulled myself upright and drained the rest of my beer, too. “You think Jackson will be annoyed? Your grandma’s going to assume he’s “the girl” in the relationship if you’re the one to pop the question.”

  “I know. I plan on never letting him live that one down.” He slapped my shoulder as he stood, maneuvering around me to get up to the bar. “Let me just settle up and we’ll head to one of the jewelers on my list.”

  I felt the smile on my face slowly disappear while I watched him paying the tab. Carissa should have been here. She would have been squealing with excitement, pressing kisses into Jason’s cheeks, throwing herself into helping him find the perfect wedding band. She would have done a far better job than me in that respect, because she actually had taste. It had taken me ages to pick out her engagement ring. I looked for months, but none seemed good enough until I tried an antique dealer in Faneuil Hall and found her vintage, circa 1920’s diamond.

  Can I come see you tonight? I tapped into Gmail chat on a whim. I needed to see her, it was like a physical ache, a stopwatch tick-tick-ticking until I could get back into the bottom floor of that mill.

  Need you even ask? she responded, freakishly fast. I always want you.

  I punched 82815 into the number pad by the front door of 311 Emery and slipped inside at half past midnight. The darkness didn’t bother me as much as usual, and I found my way to the bottom floor with very little stumbling.

  She woke when I whispered her name, rubbing her cheek with my thumb.

  “Hey,” I said, grabbing the lone chair at the table and setting it down in front of hers. “I have some happy news I wanted to share.”

  “Yeah?” she looked slightly surprised when I reached for her hand but returned the squeeze I’d given hers. Lacing her fingers through mine, she leaned forward. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Jason wanted to meet me today. I saw him at the Tradesman.”

  “I love that place,” she said wistfully.

  “I know. So I met him there, and he looked like he was about to faint, I’ve never seen him so ne
rvous.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “He’s going to ask Jackson to marry him.”

  “No way.” Her glassy eyes were huge as her mouth fell open. “Well, it’s about time, isn’t it? They’ve been together for a hundred years already.”

  “I was so happy. Unbelievably happy, until…” I trailed off when my throat got tight, wouldn’t let my words loose. I coughed, clearing my airway. “Until I realized that you should have been there. I wouldn’t really even have Jason and Jackson if it weren’t for you. I only knew Jason superficially at work, but we didn’t get close until you met Jackson at that party. You should be the one helping him pick out wedding bands. Not me.”

  “Don’t be silly, Ben, he’s your best friend, would have been your best man. Of course it should be you.” She ran her fingers through the hair above my ear, squeezing my thigh with her other hand. “Did you find any contenders for wedding bands?”

  “Some,” I said, closing my eyes at her touch. “We didn’t settle on anything, but we put a few on hold. We’re going to look at some more tomorrow.”

  “Hmm.” I felt the trill of that noise through her fingers as her nails worked their way into the hair at the nape of my neck. “I’ll help you pick one, if you need me.”

  My pulse nearly flatlined, the way it always seemed to when she used her nails on me. She was like a magician, could make every horrible thought drift away with her touch. “You will?”

  “Send me pictures of the options,” she said, her voice sounding less than an inch away. “I’ll help you decide which one’s the keeper.”

  “You’re an angel. Thank you.”

  She guided my head against her chest, her other arm wrapped around my back. “There’s no need for thanks.”

  I snaked my arms around her waist, squeezing her tight. She felt much more solid than she used to, slender still, but powerfully built; she was no longer malleable and soft and warm, melting into my hug, but it felt as though I were finally home after a long absence when she pressed her cheek into the top of my head, her nails moving concentrically through my hair.