The Party Upstairs

by Lee Conell

  “Here is what happens next,” Ruby said.

  He put up no resistance when she tried the right pocket. “You know I can’t fight back,” he said. “Physically, I mean, I won’t fight you. I don’t hit girls.”

  “You’re such a gentleman,” Ruby said. “You’re a prince among men.”

  He was shaking now. It was not just the cold. It was the way she had pushed him. The camera around his neck moved up and down, he was breathing so fast. She had the funny feeling that if she unscrewed the lens cap, his heart would be right there, pulsing behind glass. He would not test his strength against her, she realized. He would make this decision not for chivalry’s sake, but for fear of failure. Here Ruby had an advantage on him. Over the course of this day, she had become an expert at failure, had grown so skilled at self-made disasters that she had lost some of her dread of them. She had failed as a daughter today. She had failed as a candidate for a job. She had failed as a house sitter. And she had failed as an oldest friend.

  There was nothing in his right pocket either.

  “Go right ahead,” Andy said, and though he was still shaking, he spoke as though unfazed, like his steady voice didn’t belong to his quivery body. “I won’t tell anyone. Confirm everything I’ve said about you. Prove me right. Thief.”

  She put her hand down the back pocket of Andy’s jeans. Because his wrists and arms were so bony, she was surprised to realize he had a butt, a dorsal softness. She shoved her hand down the other back pocket of his jeans and found the wallet there, as well as his phone.

  “Think about what you’re doing here, Ruby. Think about who you’re stealing from.”

  She opened his wallet.

  Now Andy’s eyelids blinked: Click, click. Ruby’s dolls had blinked that way if their eyelids got a little stuck. When that happened, the key was to give the dolls a good shake. But before she could do such a thing, Andy’s nose began to bleed for the second time that day, even though she hadn’t hurled a thing at his face up here. She stepped back and opened his wallet, removing the cash, a whole bunch of bills. She didn’t even glance at the IDs or credit cards. He would cancel them as soon as she was out of sight. She ripped them free of the wallet and tossed them off the roof. It would have been more dramatic if they had fallen the ten stories. Instead they fell onto the adjacent roof.

  “Jump down there,” Andy said. Blood had beaded at the groove beneath his nose. “Jump down there immediately and get those cards, Ruby.”

  She held out the locked phone to him. “Delete the photograph of my father.”

  “That photograph has nothing to do with you. It’s my art. It’s not yours. Just like the rhino head isn’t yours.”

  She leaned back and hurled his phone off the roof. Even just falling to the next roof down was enough. The phone broke with a crack.

  “Wow,” Andy said. “Nice work. It’s going to be so much easier now to convince Caroline that you’ve been behaving like an insane woman. There’s the proof.”

  “You know I’m not insane. You tried earlier—”

  “I was just trying to make you feel better, Ruby. If you had been clearer about what you wanted . . . I was just trying to make you feel desired, and you repaid me by stealing from me.”

  “Bullshit.” She shoved the cash from the wallet into the little blue pocket on the dress. Then she threw the wallet at Andy’s feet. She leaned in close. “You won’t tell anyone about me taking this money or tossing your phone,” she said, “not just because I told you not to tell, but because you’ll be too embarrassed by your actions. Okay? You’ll be too embarrassed by how you treated me.” She leaned down and picked up her snack plate, which was now slightly wet from the drizzle of rain. She put all the remaining cheese cubes in her mouth, chewed loudly, swallowed, and breathed hard into his face, trying not to look at the red line beneath his right nostril. “And you should be embarrassed. You should be ashamed. Besides, it’s my money anyway. You owe me so bad.”

  Andy didn’t say anything. He cupped his bleeding nose with one hand.

  “Stay here.” She tried to think about robberies she’d seen in the movies. “Don’t go inside until you count to, I don’t know, five hundred.”

  “I don’t want to be in that apartment with you anyway. You better be gone by the time I go back inside.”

  She started to walk away.

  “You’re an idiot!” Andy crowed after her. “This wallet is worth a hundred times the cash you took!” He lifted the empty wallet up and waved it in the air. “It’s made out of genuine shell cordovan leather!”

  She called over her shoulder, “Count to five hundred, okay?” And then she thought of asking Lily to count to five hundred the time she took Caroline to the motor room. She shivered a little and began to walk more quickly away from Andy. When she hopped over the terrace railing, the skirt of the dress caught. She pulled at it hard. Now there was just the littlest tear in the fabric, but she didn’t mind. Let the dress rip. She refused to spend her night trying to protect 2D’s dress from harm.

  Back in the penthouse, Ruby ate three crackers very quickly. She glanced around. No sign of Caroline. Maybe she was in the bathroom. Maybe she was out getting more snacks. Maybe she decided to ditch her own party. Yet this was still Caroline’s party, whether or not she deigned to show up.

  That was the beauty of being Caroline.

  A glutinous glob of cracker had gotten trapped near the top of Ruby’s gum. She swung her tongue up there, got the glob, swallowed as hard as she could. Then, just as she grabbed her tote bag, John sidled up to her, like she was a horse he was afraid to spook. “Ruby,” he said. “Can we talk?”

  The last time she’d seen John after spending time with Andy, she’d been struck by how superhero-ish he’d appeared in comparison. Tonight she didn’t see much of a difference. John was taller, that was all, and his face was redder. But he and Andy looked at her the same way. Like she owed them more than she would ever realize. Oh, maybe she wasn’t being fair to John.

  Or maybe she should go through his wallet, too.

  He stood between her and the elevator. “We can talk for about three hundred seconds,” Ruby said.

  John, in his most infuriatingly calm tone: “We’re going to talk for however long we need to talk. Caroline called me today.”

  “She called you?”

  “She said you’re spinning out. I thought maybe I could help.”

  “You thought you could help.”

  “Well. Caroline suggested I could help. If I said something. And I do feel slightly responsible.”

  “Whatever Caroline thinks is going on with me, it has almost nothing to do with you.”

  He looked a little insulted. “I can’t help but think I gave you a lot of support during our relationship, Ruby. And now that support is gone. That would destabilize anyone. It’s totally understandable. It doesn’t make you weak.”

  “Aren’t you seeing someone now?”

  “Kind of. But I still don’t want to see you lose your mind.”

  “It’s been at least three hundred seconds.”

  “Caroline told me about the whole internship-job-confusion thing.”

  “Oh, great. Do you have professional advice for me, too?”

  “Yes. I think you should take the position.” He crossed his arms over his chest, like he was issuing a command. “Is it too late to tell them you’ve changed your mind?”

  “You’re not my career counselor.” 2D’s dress seemed to be regressing into some older version of a dress, its bodice becoming lined with whalebones, constricting Ruby’s breath. “All through our relationship,” she gasped, “you acted like my career counselor.”

  “I just wanted better things for you.”

  “That’s exactly it. It’s like you were always wanting for me, never just wanting me.”

  “Just because something sounds pith
y, Ruby, doesn’t mean it’s true.”

  “You’re being dismissive.”

  “You’re being dismissive.”

  He would not be able to see her point. And was it really her job to educate him on her feelings now that they’d broken up? No. She didn’t have to do that any longer. Their relationship had been like one long mutual unpaid internship. They had each felt slightly exploited, but they’d also each hoped the experience would help them achieve something greater in the future. “John,” Ruby said, “I need to go.” And, to her surprise, she reached for his hand and she shook it. “Tell Caroline I’m not spinning out,” she said, and then she walked around him toward the elevator.

  She was done. She had shaken John’s hand and now she should shake herself loose of this place and these people for good. She should find people who looked at her and didn’t see all her past debts to them, nor her future potential. She should find people who looked at her and saw what was there, present, before them. She hit the call button and tucked her hand into the dress’s blue skirt pocket to make sure the cash was still there. It was. The elevator doors opened and she stepped on. She had eaten so much good cheese, she had scared Andy, and she had money now. The doors closed on Caroline’s party. Ruby, descending, felt just a little rich.

  15 PLASTIC BAG

  Martin’s dead!” A darkness all around. “Martin, are you dead? Ohgodohgod. Martin?”

  At first Martin thought it was Lily’s voice informing him he had passed on. But no, too nasal. He opened his eyes. Neilson towered over him, the handle of a plastic shopping bag around his wrist. Martin was slumped between two trash cans in the garbage room.

  “I’m okay,” he said. He took a moment to process his own weight, to make sure he wasn’t himself a ghost. “I’m okay.”

  “Holy crap, Martin. What happened?”

  “I passed out, I think. Or fell asleep. Maybe I forgot to eat enough today.”

  “Here,” Neilson said, “here.” He reached into his sweater pocket and pulled out a power bar. The bar seemed to be made of cardboard and granola clusters. Martin ate it all.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay,” Neilson said. “Is the food helping?”

  Martin nodded. He at last began to stand. Neilson rushed forward. But Martin did not take his outstretched hand. He got up on his own.

  “I heard you called Frank about me,” Martin said.

  Neilson’s forehead shone. “I should apologize, my brother.” He smelled like he’d been drinking. “I don’t know why I called. It had something to do with when you said . . . Well, you implied . . .”

  “That I purposefully farted on your meditation pillow.”

  “Right. That. Something inside me got out of alignment.” Neilson shook his head. “No. That’s being too polite. I was pissed. That you would do something like that, just to make me uncomfortable. So I called and complained about the drain.” He moved the shopping bag from his right hand to his left. “The farting was a triggering thing. Karla and I lived together ten years and never farted in front of each other. It’s bizarre. You can cohabitate side by side with each other and not . . . share this thing with each other. This smell. Isn’t that weird?”

  “That is weird.”

  “Do you and Debra—”

  “Yeah, sometimes. It happens. You eat a fatty meal. Or gluten, on accident. And it happens.”

  “If it hadn’t seemed so deliberate, what you did, I wouldn’t have made that call.”

  “I understand,” Martin said, because Neilson was a tenant, because he must seem understanding.

  “But still. I shouldn’t have said anything to Sycamore. I act rashly. Karla always used to say that. Too rash. That’s why I’ve been trying to get back into the meditation thing.”

  “You have the right to complain.” Martin rubbed his temples. “Everyone in this city has the right to complain. That’s why so many people come here.”

  “Are you in real trouble?”

  Two strikes, Frank from Sycamore had said. Martin had not listened to the message that had been left for him while he and Ruby were in the park. The message was about the second strike, maybe. If Caroline had said something to her father, well, then. Then.

  Another wave of dizziness.

  But this was what he had been training for, right? He breathed with as much intent as he could muster. He tried to experience the moment, the texture of the rising dark, and as soon as he attempted to watch it, feel it, the darkness vanished and the world around him became crisp and clear. He didn’t collapse this time.

  “I’ll be fine,” he told Neilson. “Don’t worry.” When he saw Neilson’s shoulders relaxing, Martin found his shoulders doing the same. Moving his shoulders downward felt, at first, a little like pushing a heavy rock. Only there, yes, they were sinking. Both men breathed out.

  That was when Martin noticed the plastic shopping bag handles cutting into Neilson’s wrist. Neilson’s eyes followed Martin’s, moved to the plastic bag. “I came down here originally to throw this out. There’s a rat in it.” He looked up at Martin again. “There was a rat in my apartment.”

  Martin nodded. “With all the construction going on in the neighborhood, I’m not surprised. But you got it?”

  “I wanted to call you,” Neilson said, “but I thought you’d be mad because I called Sycamore. It was under the fridge. I heard it. So I got glue traps like I’ve seen you do. I’ve learned from you, man. And I caught it. But I couldn’t . . .”

  “Take the final step,” Martin said. And then, trying to make it sound like a joke, “Literally the final step. Right? The fun ole squishy punch line.”

  “I couldn’t do it.” And now Neilson focused his gaze on the floor. “So I kicked the glue trap and the rat into this bag.” He jostled the bag a little. “And I tied it.”

  The air stank. Not from Martin. From all the garbage. He wanted to step outside into the courtyard, to leave. Martin escapes into the cool March air. But he didn’t move. He stood there.

  “You let it suffocate.” Martin spoke as neutrally as possible.

  Neilson nodded.

  “It suffers more that way.”

  Little red spiders inside the whites of Neilson’s eyes. He plopped down on the floor of the garbage room, the very spot where Martin had passed out. “I fucked up so bad today, brother.”

  “No, no.” Martin squatted down next to Neilson. “Get up, okay?”

  “I ratted you out and then I killed this rat so slow, so slow. God. It’s like this karmic pun. And I pretend I’m . . . Like that I’m mindful of . . . Here.” He dug his wallet out of his back pocket. He tried to give Martin a hundred-dollar bill. “How I acted today was just so shitty. Just take the money, okay? Take your wife and kid out for a nice dinner. Karla liked the Thai place on the corner. Karla used to say . . .” And Neilson was sobbing, his chest heaving, his shoulders scrunched nearly around his ears.

  “Here.” Martin reached for the plastic bag. “I’ll throw this away.”

  But Neilson shook his head. “The more I think about it, man,” he told Martin, “the more I don’t think it was right. I suffocated this creature and now it’s going to be left to rot with all the garbage of the building? No, no, I’ve already fucked up by this rat. I need to do better, Martin, man. There’s a mantra for this, something to do with karma and the creatures of the universe big and small, the ecosystem of the karmic forces, it has to do with—”

  “Okay,” Martin said. “Chill. Breathe. We gotta throw the rat out. Let go of the bag. That’s the first step. Neilson, listen, what else would we do with it, man, but throw it in the trash?”

  “Burn it,” Neilson muttered into his kneecaps.

  “Burn it?”

  “In the boiler room. Toss it in there. That’s more respectful, Martin.”

  Toss it in there. Martin tilted his head. His legs hurt. He could sto
p squatting and sit down on the garbage room floor with Neilson. Or he could stand up and look down at the top of Neilson’s head.

  He stood up. His knees cracked like the pop-pop of bubble wrap. “You’ve never been to the boiler room, Neilson.”

  “No.”

  “What do you imagine it’s like? You think there’s some big incinerator?”

  Neilson didn’t speak.

  But Martin knew. Neilson was picturing some kind of hellscape, a pit of fire. He thought that was what the basement must contain. Neilson probably imagined himself stepping into the boiler room and tossing the rat bag into a smoldering, sulfuric vat as easily as tossing bread crumbs to a group of ducks.

  “Come with me, Neilson,” Martin said. “Bring the rat bag.”

  * * *

  —

  He hadn’t searched for the intruder in the boiler room. Martin knew no one would sleep in there, hide in there. As he expected, when he’d opened the door to the boiler room—nobody. But the room sounded like it was mobbed with people. All sorts of machines were running and roaring: The house pumps, the bladder tank, the blower on the boiler and the burner on the boiler, a motor pumping oil, a motor pumping air, the sump pump going errrrr. The room itself was a big hollow place, all bricked up, so everything echoed until it was nearly orchestral. The sounds muffled Martin’s own thoughts, his intentions, which made him so mad. He was tired of Lily putting her voice over his thoughts, and of the building putting its sounds over his thoughts, and of listening so hard all day long, translating the demands and anxieties of one tenant to the contractors, then having to express the contractors’ demands and anxieties back to the tenant. He was tired of Neilson and the way Neilson was in charge of generating their mantras, shaping their meditation sessions, while Martin was simply the quiet student.

  Now here he was, in the bowels of the building, or in its heart, or somewhere important. And he wanted his own voice to be louder than the machine music around him.

  He and Neilson walked past the water pumps, and down a few steps, until they reached the boiler. Through a small window in the boiler’s side, Martin saw the fire leaping up within. “Where’s the door on the boiler?” Neilson asked. “Can you unlock it?” A swift urge to strike Neilson. No, not strike. Make contact, the meditation teacher had said. What if Martin turned his own voice into a kind of singing bowl, changing the vibratory frequencies in the air? He cleared his throat. He said, “There was a flood in the boiler room a few years back.”