by Zoey Castile
Part of me has already started moving too fast. In the mornings when the air is so cold I can see my own breath and the sun has only just starting rising, I take ten steps outside of my house. Chris told me to take small steps, didn’t he? In a way, with Lena at school, I have more time to focus on doing this one thing for her. Hanging the damn boxing bag in the garage.
“What then, Pat?” Chris asked me. “What does that have to do with allowing her to see you?”
I need to be able to do this one thing for her. It meant something to her. She hasn’t asked for anything, but she had asked for this. Her dad taught her how to box. I asked her for a little more time and now I have to have something to show for it.
Yeah, that night in the living room was a big step. It has been fueling me ever since. The feel of her skin on my lips. She smelled like fire and grass and something sweet like vanilla. Every part of me was trembling. I thought I’d combust against her. I still don’t know how I found the balls to tell her to come inside the house.
Chris said that I shouldn’t do things that I’m not ready for, but he doesn’t know the real situation between us. He doesn’t know how I feel about Lena, how I would do anything she asked of me.
Except look at her. Except touch her. Except leave the house.
Those thoughts rebound in my head with the passing days. That is a truth I can’t escape.
First, I get to the garage. I hang the bag. Then, what? I could stand there and surprise her. Is that really how I want her to see me? No, that isn’t right. I am not one for romantic gestures. That was more of Ricky’s thing. I would ask Scarlett but Lena and I agreed we wouldn’t say anything about what’s going on between us.
Scarlett would probably say some sappy shit like prepare a nice dinner. Ricky would probably tell me to hire a small jet and fill it with strawberries and champagne. Do I just take a fucking picture of myself and send it to her? Wait for her reaction? Would she want me the same way if she looked at me now? She says she would, but what if she recoils from me? What if she’s like those nurses on that day? It would undo me in a way I wouldn’t know how to fix again. And I know that’s an unfair thing to ask of her.
For now, we have the nights on the phone. I haven’t touched her since, and it is like a ghost limb now that I have held her once. Now that I know I won’t want to let her go again.
But it’s for the best.
That’s what I tell myself at least.
Two weeks into September and I get halfway between the house and the garage.
LENA
“Better, Lena,” Professor Meneses says. Her light-brown hair is brushed back into a neat ponytail and her round glasses always look like they’re about to fall off the tip of her long, crooked nose.
I wouldn’t call my sketch better, but it’s a start. My fingers feel stiff and not because I spent last telling Patrick in excruciating detail what I was doing with the vibrator I bought at the local Feminist Club fund-raiser. It’s been almost four weeks into the semester and I feel behind the others. We’re studying the human body, and as much as I love staring at a naked stranger with a flacid penis for hours, I’d rather be naked. In bed. Talking to Patrick.
“Your movements are beautifully frustrated, Lena,” Professor Meneses tells me on her second lap. On the other end of the room Mari’s cat-green eyes find me and she snorts.
I pinch the piece of charcoal between my fingers and smile. “Thank you?”
Meneses quickly moves on, and like all the other sketches this week, they’re unfinished. They don’t even look like people, just smudges of ash. I snap pictures of them and send them to Patrick.
Pat: Not exactly the nudes I’d expect.
Me: The only ones you’re going to get. ;)
Pat: You coming home? I can order.
Me: I’m sorry, I picked up studio hours. Ari is already mad that I didn’t call her at midnight on her birthday yesterday because I fell asleep.
Pat: Jack’s birthday was the day before on the twenty-eighth.
Me: Surrounded by Libras. Kind of love that.
Pat types and stops.
Me: Wait up for me?
Pat: I don’t know. I have a really packed schedule of reading Scarlett’s latest book.
Me: How do you get to read it?
Pat: I believe she calls me her beta reader. I asked her if I could call it alpha reader, but she didn’t like that.
Me: I kind of love this aspect of your life.
Pat: It only took thirty-five years, but I finally read books.
Me: Maybe you can read the really dirty bits to me tonight.
Pat: Tonight, Lena.
I pocket my phone. I’m the last one to put my things away. Mari is at the doorway flirting with one of the girls from class. Keillor and his girlfriend are leaving the room, hand in hand. He hasn’t said a word to me since the day at the store, and I’m glad that’s all sorted out as just an awkward moment.
“Lena,” Professor Meneses says in that smoky voice of hers. “Will I be seeing you at my exhibit tonight?”
Shit. That’s tonight?
Tonight, Lena. It felt like a different kind of promise. But this is too important. She’s my teacher, and I’m sure everyone else in the department is going to be there.
“Of course,” I say. “I have studio hours, but what time is it at again?”
“My darling, you work yourself to death. Take the night off. There won’t be anyone here because everyone will be at the exhibit. At least, I hope. Mustn’t jinx myself.” She knocks on the nearest easel. “Six o’clock!”
I wave as she leaves the room. “See you tonight.”
Tonight, then. On the bright side, this means I’ll be able to be home in time for my naughty storytime with Patrick.
PAT
Lena is coming home early, which is both good and bad for me.
She has to change for a party, but she promises to come back for tonight. The plan is to have dinner ready for when she gets here. In the imaginary advice between Scarlett and Ricky, Scarlett wins. I find a nice bottle of wine, one of the many gifts my agency had shipped to me after the accident.
“I can do this,” I say out loud.
I go to one of the boxes I keep downstairs full of only family things. I rummage through one until I find my mom’s box of index card recipes. She used to painstakingly write her favorites down from magazines and friends. Brigid Halloran learned to make Italian dishes to impress my dad when they first met, and he, in turn, serenaded her with her favorite Irish ballads he learned from his grandparents.
Mom’s best dish was a rabbit tagliatelle. I don’t have rabbit, but I have beef and I hope it works out. My parents weren’t perfect in many ways. They fought and yelled and were just trying to get by with three loud, reckless boys. But they showed their love in other ways. If I could be a fraction of my parents, then maybe I could be on the way to becoming the person that can deserve Lena. Jack. The kind of person that can ask for forgiveness. Right now, I’m the guy that managed to burn pasta.
I fucking burned pasta. How did I even do that?
I grab the pot handle before the smoke detectors can go off and yank open the kitchen door. The wind bites my skin, and I march around the garage where the garbage cans are. I throw out the entire pot.
It isn’t until I’m inside the house that I realize I walked out there and back again.
I grab the sides of the counter.
Holy shit.
Did I really just do that?
Before I can celebrate, I get a text from Lena: Heading to the party.
I part the blinds in the kitchen. She’s at her door, clueless of the fact that I was just out there. She’s stuffing her arms into a flimsy leather jacket. Her dress is my favorite shade of red, a crimson that matches her lips. When she walks, it reveals a slit at the side of her thigh. Her tall ankle boots make those legs appear so much longer. I have never wanted to go to her so badly.
I grab the doorknob. I just did this. I can
do it again. I twist the handle but I freeze up again.
No, no, no.
That vertigo sensation crashes over me again as I shut my eyes and I see the flash of headlights. The splatter of blood on glass. I haven’t seen these images in so long. My heartbeat races, and this time it isn’t because of Lena.
I take several steps back.
This can’t happen. I can’t take one step forward and fifteen back. I can’t do that to her. She can’t see me like this.
I grab my phone: Have fun.
Lena: Tonight then.
Me: Tonight.
That’s all I can manage before I go to my gym. I crank up my music as loud as it can go, not caring that I’ll probably shatter my eardrums one of these days. I have to get it together before she comes back.
For a moment I want to call someone. Scarlett. Jack. Chris. I have people that I want to talk to but none of them will tell me the thing that I want.
I want to be better. I want to stop feeling this way.
I scratch at my chest, my scars hot under my skin. I breathe through it. I lie back on my bench press and try different numbers, but no one is picking up today. It’s Friday night. My little brother, even in a physical rehab clinic, is probably doing something other than hiding in a gym.
I feel desperate. A dark, ugly feeling crawls from the depths where I thought I’d buried all of my fears. An anger I thought was gone rips through as I get up and ram my fists into the nearest wall. This time, I hit hard enough to break through the Sheetrock. I’ve hit this spot enough that sooner or later I was going to break through. Isn’t that what is supposed to happen? You do something enough to make progress and here I am not making progress. Here I am ambling through my shit without her. No matter how hard I try, I’m still a fragment of myself. Blood runs down my fist from the open gash of my knuckles. I take off my shirt and use it to staunch the wound.
I race upstairs and grab the first aid kit from under the kitchen sink and do my best to clean it up. I wrap my hand with a bandage and some tape.
“I can do this,” I tell myself.
I just need to work out this frustration, this fear. I’m so close, I can taste it. I put my music on the highest volume and push my body until I’m weak and trembling. Between reps, I feel the cold wind on my cheeks from when I stepped outside. I try to hold on to that until the anger evaporates. I lift two free weights and do arm raises, my hand stiff and stinging with sweat.
Then, there’s a pounding on my door. When I look at my watch, three hours have passed.
It’s Lena.
“Patrick!” She shouts and shouts my name. “What happened?”
“I’m fine,” I shout, defensive. On edge. She can’t see me. Not this way. She deserves better.
“Pat.” Her voice is trembling. “There’s blood. What did you do?”
“Just leave, I can’t do this right now—”
But she doesn’t leave.
“I—I know who you are. I know everything that happened.”
The minute she says that, I feel my body give out. I drop the weights with a loud crash, and the memory I’ve tried the hardest to push away comes surfacing, paralyzing me, until I relive the entire wretched thing.
LENA
Professor Meneses has carved out a market for herself painting her dachshund as different presidents of the United States. The studio space is an old court building now used by the art department. It has beautiful columns and polished hardwood floors. The paintings are hung in gold frames worthy of the Met. I don’t really understand the dog, though, and it’s things like this that make me question why I went into art, but after one glass of champagne, the dog begins to look kind of charming as George Washington. Still, events like this make me feel out of place.
I tell Mari as much. She’s a vision in a sparkly black cocktail dress that makes everyone in a hundred-mile radius feel overdressed. It’s fantastic.
“You, Magdalena Martel, are exactly where you belong. With me. You’ll see. I’m going to curate exhibits at the Louvre. I’ll be a tastemaker, not an artist. You’re the artist.”
“Not lately.”
“I have faith in you. When you start painting again, it will be exactly the right thing at the right moment.”
I look into our glasses of champagne. “I don’t think I got the same drink as you.”
She throws up her hands in an exasperated way, and, in turn, splashes me with what’s left in her glass.
“Oh shit. Sorry!”
“That’s fine,” I say. “Pretty much in line with what this day is shaping up to be.”
After the most stressful week of my life, between my stepmom hitting me up for more money, the hospital bills that are still somehow multiplying, and my general coursework, I still haven’t started the assignment. I was hoping to get in some hours at the studio tonight, but instead, I’m here. Professor Meneses has given us the theme of “home” because she wants to torture all of us.
I haven’t painted a single thing since school started. I thought that all the orgasms Patrick has coaxed out of me through our phone sex marathons would have helped, but they have just added to my stress levels. When I get home, all I want to do is crash. I’ve missed his calls the last four nights, and as much as I want to hear him, I also grow increasingly frustrated with the distance between us. I tell myself that tonight will be different. He was making so much noise in the house. I really hope he isn’t trying to cook for himself. I’d be in more of a rush to get home if I could crawl into bed with him, feel him against me as I fell asleep.
A girl can dream.
I leave Mari for the bathroom where I blot the excess liquid. I should’ve gotten a better picture of me in the dress earlier to send to Pat. This is, after all, my lucky one. Everyone has something like this in their closet. Some magical object that possesses a divine power to help them get laid. At least, that’s what every romantic comedy ever taught me. Good thing the red fabric is dark enough that you can’t really tell I got a champagne shower unless you look real close.
When I exit, I nearly collide into my professor. She’s wearing her large round glasses.
“Magdalena,” she says, “thank you for coming. I can’t wait to see what you’re going to have in store this semester. You know, I was on the admissions board when you submitted your portfolio.”
She has told me this several times, but at least it’s a compliment.
“I can’t thank you enough.”
“No need. You have more than talent. You have a vision.”
That sends my nerves on alarm because the only vision I’ve had lately is of me getting an F and a blank canvas that will haunt me forever and ever.
“Excuse me, I see a reporter friend of mine. I can’t wait until you’re on this side of things, darling girl.”
I let out a sigh and grab another glass. These things usually run long, but I might cut out soon and surprise Patrick with an early call.
There’s a full-length mirror and I take a couple of snaps for Ari. She responds in ten seconds with a cheesy smile and thumbs-up. “I hope Señor Soccer likes it.”
“She’s definitely wrong on that one,” I mutter to myself.
“Who’s wrong?” Keillor asks, walking around the column with a bemused smile on his face. He’s wearing a blazer over a punk band T-shirt, and his dark-blond hair is roughly combed back.
“No one,” I say curtly.
“So, Lena. I thought you weren’t working at the Donatello place anymore.”
“I’m not working there anymore. I live there.”
This has Keillor intrigued for some reason I can’t understand. It’s not a sexual vibe he gives me. It’s different, like a vulture circling around a promising nearly dead animal.
“Why are you so interested in the place?”
He looks over his shoulder to make sure we’re alone. “Listen, I have a friend who would pay good money for a picture of Halloran, that’s why. Between you and me, if you’re tired of workin
g for shitty minimum wage at the studio, these pictures can set you up for a while. I don’t know about you, but my tuition isn’t cheap. Maybe we can split the payday.”
I stare at him like he’s grown scales on his face. What in the world? I drain my glass because if I were anywhere else, I would have poured it over his head. Besides, I need to wet my mouth because it is dry as the desert. “Why would anyone want to pay for pictures of a soccer player?”
Keillor stares at me with cool blue eyes. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “You’re serious?”
Mari comes up beside me and wraps her arm around my waist. “What’s up, bro?”
“Nothing, just filling Lena here in on her boss.”
“He’s not her boss,” Mari says. “Goodbye.”
She holds up her hand and it’s like she mentally removes him from the room. He starts to leave, but not before slowing down beside me, like a drive-by.
“Look it up. Patrick Halloran,” Keillor says. “You know where to find me.”
And then he’s gone.
“Ignore him. He un-ironically owns pictures of dogs playing poker, that’s why Meneses tolerates him. And before you say anything, yes, I will be the snob in this room full of dogs dressed up as the founding fathers. At least the colors are complimentary.” Mari pauses. “Lena, you don’t look so good.”
I know that name. That time I Googled Patrick Donatello MLS, our Google overlords tried to correct me. Did you mean Patrick Halloran?
I didn’t think anything of it because the first article that came up was about his injury and how he’d never play again.
“I think this champagne is making me sick.”
“Oh no, traitorous drink! Want me to drive you?”
I shake my head. “It’s not far. I didn’t finish it.”
But really, I can’t wait to get out of here and get on my phone. I leave without saying goodbye and jump in my freezing-cold car. I type in the name. The service is spotty, but after a little while everything downloads at once.