by Megan Crane
And the fact that Nate was so cute that even Amy Lee sighed over him was just a bonus.
Across the room, Nate shifted position on his bar stool, so I could see his puppy-dog eyes for myself. And also the person those eyes were focused on: Helen.
I felt rage sweep through me, prickling along my scalp and then shooting along my skin to the tips of my toes.
The thing about Helen was that she was that girl, I thought as I knocked back my beer, and then helped myself to the rest of Oscar’s. He didn’t complain, he just raised his brow at Amy Lee and then launched himself toward the bar for refills.
You could say that I’d conducted a study of Helen, I thought then. It began the day she sauntered into the tiny, concrete-walled room we would be sharing for our freshman year, smiled at me and the remains of my high school hair, and claimed the bed beneath the windows. The better bed. I didn’t even put up a fight. I was dazzled.
Helen, with her fashionably ratty jeans and casual assumption that everyone wanted to hang out with her, was cool. Impossibly cool. Even the fact that she had one of those jarring donkey laughs like Janice on Friends just made her interesting, when on anyone else, a laugh like that would be dorky beyond belief. Nothing about Helen was dorky.
Helen had no qualms about walking up to the cutest boy in our dorm and asking him what was going on that terrifying first night at college, and then inviting herself along. She didn’t care if the more insecure girls hated her. She intimidated our RA simply by turning up and draping herself across a chair in that boneless way she had. She didn’t seem to notice any of the tension or envy she kicked up in her wake.
Helen was a guy’s girl. She never met a guy, in fact, who didn’t want to be her friend. She never met a girl who did. I, meanwhile, was very much the opposite. My knowledge of boys at eighteen came entirely from fantasy novels and certain classic WB shows. I was a girl’s girl. The moment I met Georgia and Amy Lee, I knew I would be friends with them, because we were all the same beneath the skin. Living with Helen was like seeing behind a curtain. I got to see what it was like to be everything I couldn’t be.
She was that girl. The one I had believed for eighteen years existed only in the imaginations of Hollywood screenwriters. And the fact that she was my roommate meant that I got to be that girl along with her, if only in my own mind.
Between worshiping her at eighteen and wanting to leap across a crowded bar to strangle her at twenty-nine, however, there was the entire span of our friendship. There were the random nights out we’d had in those chaotic years after college, just the two of us, where I would marvel at her near-superhuman ability to attract cute boys and she would tell me how much she relied on my friendship. There were the phone conversations when she’d tell me long, hilarious stories about her romantic exploits that always ended with some guy begging for another chance while Helen tried to extricate herself. These were the things that made me roll my eyes when I saw her number on caller ID, and they were also the things that made me smile when I thought about her. There was no one quite like Helen. I’d known that even as a teenager.
When she’d started playing her little games with Nate over the summer—all those sidelong glances and overly intimate smiles she was so good at—I’d just gritted my teeth and ignored it. That was just Helen being Helen, I’d thought. That was the sort of thing she did, it didn’t mean anything, she couldn’t help herself. I’d spent long hours on the phone assuring Georgia and Amy Lee that of course it was annoying that Helen had no boundaries, but that of course nothing would happen, because even though she drove me crazy most of the time, she and I were friends. Having lived directly across the hall from us freshman year and having been less enamored of Helen than I was, Amy Lee and Georgia were understandably skeptical. But they both loved me too much to actually come out and say I told you so now.
“Here’s a shot of Jägermeister,” Amy Lee announced, slapping the shot down in front of me. I blinked, unaware until that moment how far inside my head I’d gone. “I think you should view it as an anesthetic. Numb the pain, sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ and when you go home tonight, you’ll at least never have to face the two of them for the first time ever again.”
I was already feeling blurry around the edges, but I took the shot.
“Let’s stop staring,” Amy Lee suggested. I realized it wasn’t the first time she’d said it. “Let’s talk about how Georgia’s job is ridiculous. I’ll start. It’s ridiculous.”
Georgia was a lawyer and, like tonight, was forever traveling for work. When particularly morose—which usually meant she’d over-served herself vodka without the Red Bull—she could sketch the layouts of most major domestic airports on cocktail napkins. This time she was in Cleveland. Or possibly Cincinnati. Somewhere out there in the middle. She had left me several supportive voice mails and a largely profane text message, encouraging me to ignore Nate and remember that Helen wasn’t worth being upset about.
Though she didn’t use those words.
With Jägermeister, I decided, that should be no problem whatsoever.
Later, I felt blurred right through to the core when I ran into Nate outside the bathrooms.
We stared at each other in the tiny little alcove, festooned with flyers for local bands and supposedly hip postcards.
For a moment we were completely alone. Helen was nowhere near. I wouldn’t have chosen a noisy bar to finally have a moment to ourselves, but it was the first one we’d had in seventeen days. I couldn’t be choosy.
But then, with only the slightest lingering glance, Nate slid past me.
It took another whole breath for me to realize that he actually, seriously, really wasn’t planning to speak to me.
“Are you kidding?” I demanded. “You’re giving me the silent treatment? You have the audacity to give me the silent treatment?”
“Gus.” Nate sighed and shook his head. His silky brown hair tumbled across his forehead, and he shoved it back with one hand. His voice matched his eyes: sweet, rich chocolate. His hand rose as if he wanted to touch me, then dropped. “You seem so upset.”
“Weird,” I said through the tightness of my throat. “I wonder why? I guess that obnoxious single phone call failed to make me feel better about stuff like you lying to me and—”
“When you’re calmer, and maybe not as drunk, we can talk,” Nate said. As if he were being generous. “If you want.” As if he were doing me a favor.
“Or maybe you can go to hell,” I countered, hurt and furious. “How could you, Nate? How could you do something—”
I would have kept going. I might even have started to yell. But he reached out and put his hand on my arm.
I went mute.
“Gus,” he said fiercely, his eyes darker than usual and sad, too. “You don’t know how much I wish I hadn’t hurt you.”
“Then why did you?” I had to fight to get the question out, past the emotion clogging my throat.
“You want things I can’t give,” he said in that same hushed, hard tone, never breaking eye contact. “You’re sweet and smart and funny and . . . I’m not who you think I am. The thing with Helen just proved that. I’m just not . . .” He broke off then, and ducked his head. When he looked up, his expression made me feel sad.
“You’re just not what?” I prompted him, although everything felt precarious and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear his answer.
“I’m just not who you want me to be,” he whispered. “I wanted to be. I really did. More than you’ll know.” He dropped his hand and stepped back. “It’s better this way, trust me.”
As I said, I blame Janis Joplin. And Amy Lee for introducing the Jägermeister, as well as the thought of singing, into the night. Mix Janis with a few too many beers and unnecessary anesthetic shots, roast it all on the flames of a broken heart, betrayal, and It’s better this way and what did anyone expect?
It started with Bon Jovi. When I was growing up, no one admitted to listening to Bon Jovi, and now that we were almost
thirty everyone seemed to know every line of “You Give Love A Bad Name.” The bar erupted in sound, as everyone indulged in air guitar and the birthday girl herself rocked out in the middle of what was, on some nights, a makeshift dance floor.
This was probably what made me believe that I, too, should take to the floor.
The guitar kicked in.
Janis started to wail, “Come on, come on, come on—”
What happened next was probably inevitable.
Which didn’t make it any less embarrassing.
I started off just singing. Then, right around the second chorus, something flipped inside me and I thought, what the hell?
This was always, I had discovered through years of trial and error, the moment at which I should stop whatever it was I was doing and take deep breaths until the what the hell feeling passed. The what the hell feeling was not my friend.
So, obviously, I ignored every lesson I’d ever learned in the span of my twenties and kept right on singing. Even louder than before.
Janis Joplin lured me on, with her scratchy voice and obvious pain. I thought, Janis and I have a bond. Then I thought what the hell again, and the next thing I knew I was shouting out the lyrics.
Directly to Nate and Helen.
Into their faces, to be precise.
My memory got a little foggy on the details, whether from Jägermeister or shame I would never know for sure, but I retained a crystal-clear recollection of myself standing on a chair as I towered above the two of them, shrieking out my extremely drunken version of “Piece of My Heart.”
I didn’t know which was worse: the appalled look on Nate’s face, Helen’s frozen smirk, or the sympathetic expressions both Amy Lee and Oscar wore as they drove me home to my little apartment around the corner from Fenway Park. All I knew was, I’d be seeing them play inside my head for the foreseeable future.
Outside my apartment building, I waved the car away and paused to take a deep breath while I reviewed the wreckage. I didn’t feel blurry any longer, just slightly sick. The late October night was so cold and dark, however, that it was hard to take a deep breath. I was reduced to taking a few shallow ones instead. Somehow, that made it all seem worse.
I was turning thirty years old on the second of January, my perfect boyfriend had cheated on me with my freshman year roommate and then dumped me, and I had just humiliated myself in front of every single one of our mutual friends.
The good news was, it couldn’t get worse.
chapter two
It was clear to just about everyone that I was meant to be a librarian when, in the fourth grade, I spent my winter vacation alphabetizing, arranging, and cataloging all the books in my parents’ house. For fun.
It wasn’t clear to me, however. My plan was to take the Broadway stage by storm (which, perhaps, puts the Janis Joplin horror into perspective). When I wasn’t sorting my books into appropriate stacks, I was belting out show tunes. Evita, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, Les Misérables, Anything Goes, and so on. If it had been up to me, I would have sung all day. I took voice lessons, sang in the school choir as well as the church choir, and often gave impromptu concerts to my collection of stuffed animals.
I’d always had a thing for The Music Man, so when Broadway mysteriously failed to come calling for me in Boston, I went with my second choice and got my master’s in Library and Information Science. I soon discovered that Marion the Librarian was expected to do a little bit more than sing and wear spectacles these days, however. While I was in grad school, I happened upon a part-time job in a tiny museum no one had ever heard of—the Choate Downey Museum, just a few streets off the Common. The Choate Downey Museum boasted the mediocre art and mediocre collections of the Downey family, of which Minerva Choate Downey was the current heir and curator.
She was also a complete lunatic.
When I graduated from Simmons with my master’s in hand, I had big dreams of, say, a cushy job at Harvard or (during a brief, giddy spring fever in which relocation seemed crucial) the New York Public Library. But Minerva sat me down and offered me a full-time salary, excellent benefits, and the impressive title of head librarian. I was also the only librarian—the only employee, in fact—but at just twenty-five, who was I to argue?
Four years later, I was still head librarian of the Choate Downey Museum, and while from time to time I dreamed about a really exciting job—being a superspy like Sydney Bristow on Alias, for example—I was fairly content. The fact was, I loved what I did. I got paid to search for information, then to arrange it so others could experience the same voyage of discovery. I got to charter trips through knowledge. I spent my days researching questions no one in the world but me might ask—but if I decided the answer needed to be known, as head librarian I got to decide to search for it.
True, I had to deal with Minerva and her many delusions, but I tended to chalk that up in the “entertainment” column. After all, Georgia had the theoretically more exciting job, being a big-time lawyer, but I was the one who got to spend whole mornings seriously debating whether or not it was appropriate for Minerva to identify herself as One of the Blood to the hapless fools who got lost on their tours of Revolutionary War Boston and wandered into our front hall. I doubted Georgia had that kind of fun while filing documents and typing out briefs.
Then again, Georgia lived for corporate law. Who knew what she found fun?
“I thought we had an anti-karaoke pact,” Georgia said when she appeared before me that afternoon in the wide foyer that also served as my office. “It was my first year of law school, we chose to sing that 4 Non Blondes song about sixty times, and the next morning we made vows.” She was shivering, and let the heavy door slam shut behind her, but not before a blast of frigid air rushed in from the street so I could shiver too. I wrapped the scarf I used to combat the Museum’s inevitable drafts tighter around my neck.
“Hi, Georgia,” I said from behind my desk, tucked at the foot of the stairs. On good days, that desk made me feel powerful and in control. I faced the day—and the door—with confidence. On other days, I felt lost and somewhat exposed behind it. Today I was still too embarrassed from the night before to care.
“I think that if we were breaking vows around here, I should have been consulted,” Georgia continued. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“Next time I accidentally humiliate myself in front of my ex and his new skank who happens to be my ex-friend—”
“Are you sure you were actually friends with Helen? I mean, you were, but was she? Does she even know how to be friends with someone who doesn’t want to sleep with her?”
“—I’ll be sure to interrupt your depositions so you can race to my side and, hopefully, stop it.” I slumped down in my chair. “I just can’t understand how, in the space of two and a half weeks, I went from feeling totally grown-up to feeling about seventeen. Seventeen and surly.”
Georgia clomped around the side of the desk in her knee-high court boots and collapsed into my visitor’s chair, pushing her long legs out in front of her. I took the opportunity to study her. Georgia looked grown-up because she looked corporate and hot all at the same time. Georgia was tall and had wild, curly, unprofessional hair. It was a mix of reds, auburns, and blonds—all of it completely natural. She claimed she used the hair as a weapon. It was ditz hair, so no one saw her coming. She liked to pair the hair with very austere, severe suits, which confused everyone.
The Museum was thoughtfully located within walking distance of Georgia’s firm. This triumph of coincidental geography meant that I saw Georgia more than anyone else outside her law firm. Whenever she was in town and she could sneak away from her piles of documents for a few minutes, we had coffee at the Starbucks around the corner or the occasional dinner. Sometimes I thought I was the only thing tethering Georgia to the life she was no longer living outside office hours.
She looked around, taking in the lazy afternoon stillness of the Museum, which
was marred only by Minerva’s latest obsession: operatic arias. Extremely dramatic music floated down from her quarters, which took over the entire top floor of the building. Georgia raised her brow toward the staircase.
“It’s been arias for almost a month.” I shrugged. “I’m expecting a change any day now. Care to place a bet?”
“I’m still recovering from her brief flirtation with grunge rock, a decade late,” Georgia said darkly. “I’m not betting anymore.”
In case I failed to mention it—Minerva sang. Very badly. Unlike me, she had never relinquished her dreams of stardom, and were it not for her Simon Cowell phobia, I had no doubt she would audition for American Idol in a heartbeat. Tuesdays and Thursdays, she was that scary woman who nipped into the karaoke bar (alone) and belted out five or six songs over the course of the evening to the horror of the assembled birthday and going-away partiers. Don’t ask me how I knew this—I was still emotionally scarred and, as Georgia had pointed out, vows had been made.
“Court date?” I asked as Georgia glanced at her watch.
“Soon,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure I was actually back on East Coast time, in Boston. I’ve been traveling so long, I’m never really sure where I am.”
“Home sweet Beantown,” I assured her. “Do you have time for coffee?”
“Not today,” Georgia said, and stood up again. “I’ll see you at the Halloween party tomorrow. We will look fabulous, we will be intimidating, and we will make sure no one remembers any singing incidents.”
“I’m not going to the Halloween party.”
“Of course you are.”
“Georgia, please.” I glared at her. “I wasn’t going to the Halloween party as of two and a half weeks ago. If you concentrate, I bet you can remember why.”
“The Halloween party is tradition,” Georgia argued. “There’s no reason you should give up long-term traditions just because one or two things have changed recently.”