“Where is this?”
He finally allowed me to get up.
“Hurry. Don’t look around. Just come.”
He took my hand and dragged me out his side, hustling me to the curb before I could find any street signs or get my bearings.
“You’re parked next to a hydrant.”
He was pulling me up the steps. It was just an ordinary brownstone. Not what I associated with the deep, soul-stirring sounds that came through the phone. I thought it would be under the ocean.
“Is this where you’ve been calling me from?”
“What?”
Maybe there was a secret passageway or a trapdoor. He buzzed once, long. I noticed he held his hand over the name.
“You don’t have a key?”
“I have to park,” he said. “You go on in.”
“I don’t understand. There’s other people? I thought we were going to be alone.”
The doors clicked open. He shoved me in ahead of him.
“It is on the second floor.”
“What is?”
He was marching me up the steps. This wasn’t making sense. Suddenly, I was cold.
“Eve.” For the first time he sounded nervous. “You must understand. Not everything I do is what I want to do. There are forces I must answer to. As must we all.”
“What are you talking about?”
I’m dressed so well, I thought, smoothing my silk blouse, feeling the velvet of my pants. Nothing really bad can happen to me.
“Just remember, after, that this was not a choice I had. I was instructed. I was powerless.”
He was close behind. I couldn’t turn. Couldn’t spin and push him aside and run away. And even if I could, where would I go? He reached around to knock on the door. I was being kidnapped! Except I had gone so willingly. I was so stupid. I had let it all happen to me without thinking. And now it was too late.
“I have to leave you.”
“Wait. Aren’t you going to at least come in with me?”
“I have to go. The car.”
“Oh. Your car. Excuse me.”
My hand was in my pocket. He was right. Words weren’t really the best way to say yes or no. He never believed what I said, anyway. He never took me seriously. It was all lies. This whole time I thought he was listening to me, and really he was selling me out! I was hysterical inside, but calm and determined in my movements. I knew exactly what I was going to do. If I couldn’t refuse him in words, how else could I refuse him? What kind of no would he understand? My fingers curled around the switchblade’s soft rubber handle. All I had to do was take it out, push the button, and—
“Surprise!”
Brandy, Crystal, and Nora were crowded into the doorway, trying to open a bottle of champagne. I stared at them. Viktor was gone. I could hear him taking the steps, two at a time, down to his precious, illegally parked car. Running away from my anger.
“It’s your bridal shower,” Brandy explained, seeing how totally clueless I was. “We got the idea from Nora. Remember? A surprise shower?”
They were still dressed from work. They had been waiting every night to throw me this party, they said. But I never came. So that morning, when I finally called, they frantically motioned for Viktor to make me come with him, to drive me around in circles, basically, with my head down, so I wouldn’t recognize where we were going, while they got back here, to this apartment Brandy and Crystal shared. It was only a few blocks from the bar, a sunny room in the back of a building. It had two kittens, both white with a big brown spot, chasing each other. The furniture was cheap, used, but went together, a couch and two chairs, this tropical living room set. A chain of letters, from a card store, hung between the two windows, spelling C-O-N-G-R-A-T-U-L-A-T-I-O-N-S. There were flowers, and champagne with orange juice.
“But we’re not really getting married.” I was confused, secretly trying to unglue my fingers, which were still wrapped around the knife. “I didn’t say yes.”
“Where have you been?” Nora complained. “Every night we’ve been ready and every night you haven’t showed.”
“I’ve been sick. I didn’t know you were planning this the whole time.”
“Sick how?”
Crystal looked at me. I followed her eyes to my belly.
“Oh no, not that way,” I said with such emphasis we all laughed.
For one terrible moment I actually thought it was possible, that I was pregnant, carrying Viktor’s child, that he had managed to put it in there, somehow, with one of his looks. It was just the sort of sneaky trick he’d be good at.
“Is he coming back?”
“Girls only.”
Nora poured. Very professionally. She was back to her old self.
“I wasn’t really sick. I was crazy.”
“Crazy how?”
“I thought . . .” What had I thought? My fears seemed so silly, in the light of day. “I thought there were these guys who were after me.”
“Not anymore. You are taken.”
“What?” I didn’t get it at first. “Oh. You know it’s not real, right? I mean it’s just this mutual use job.”
“What is?”
“Marriage.” I looked around wildly. “What are we even doing here?”
Brandy giggled.
“You are so funny, Eve.”
Crystal raised her glass. I thought she was going to make a toast. And she did, kind of. She said, “There’s cookies.”
We talked. In a way it was just what I’d wanted before, this bonding time with all of us, and no Viktor. But for some reason I found myself arguing with them, defending things I was usually the first to make fun of.
“All families are cults. You grow up in this closed-off world, with its special rules and rituals. You even have private family names for each other. And you think it’s normal, that the same rules and rituals are followed in every house, up and down the street. Then you get older, you go out, see people doing things differently, and you think they’re the ones who are weird. At first.”
“So you’re saying the place you grew up in wasn’t strange?”
“I’m saying it was just a family for people who didn’t have families. So yes, in a way it was less strange than what it was based on, from where you guys all came from, it sounds like.”
We had been drinking, except for Crystal, who was more into the hostessing part of it, filling up everyone’s glass, bringing out more food. All I ate was the cookies. They were so soft. Sugar and alcohol, my ideal diet.
“You had to wear a uniform?”
“Didn’t you have rules about what you could and couldn’t wear?”
“Sure.”
“Well, so did we. They were just narrower, the rules. So we looked more alike. But didn’t you dress pretty much the same as your friends? I mean now that you look back on it?”
“It certainly explains a lot,” Brandy said.
“About what?”
“About you and clothes.”
What was funny was how they were all still in their uniforms, the outfit from the bar, even though it looked different on each of them. Brandy wore hers so well. She was the model it was based on. It showed her off, made her body look long and slim. It didn’t break her up into segments. Crystal managed to desex the whole thing. She canceled out the slinkiness, acted like she was in overalls. Nora was the outfit. You couldn’t see where it ended and she began. She was worn in places, threadbare, but completely comfortable, moving inside it like the material was a second skin.
“What else have you got?” she asked, holding the champagne bottle upside down, squeezing out the last few drops.
Crystal went to show her. Brandy and I stared at each other. We weren’t usually alone together.
“I tried your trick,” she said.
“What trick?”
“Going on that train. The number six. Downtown.”
I blinked. I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You said you were on that
train and . . .”
“Oh.”
Then I remembered.
“But I was with someone.”
She nodded like, “I knew that,” except obviously she didn’t. I couldn’t figure out if it was a joke or if I’d discovered a new depth to her innocence.
“I should have made myself more clear. I didn’t mean the train made me feel that way. Although maybe it was the train, now that I think about it.”
“No. It wasn’t.” She tapped her glass, trying to make it ring. “Sometimes I think there’s something wrong with me.”
I struggled to get out of the chair. It was this cage of peeling bamboo. I gripped the skinny arms and pulled.
“When I was little,” she went on, “someone told me what touching was. Like a stranger touching you. Know what I said?”
“Listen,” I whispered, kneeling in front of her. Crystal and Nora were still over by the sink. “I don’t really want to get married.”
“I said, You mean there’s a word for that?”
She was always staring at things, getting lost in them, like her empty glass now, running her finger along the rim.
“Is that from the bar?”
“What isn’t?”
I looked around. Everything was. Glasses. Ashtrays. The liquor we were drinking. How had they gotten them away, with Viktor watching all the time? Unless he was only watching me.
“It’s a little late, Eve. I mean you’ve been trying to get him ever since you started working.”
“I have not!”
“And now that he wants you, you act like it’s not even happening. Well, it is. You’re marrying Viktor. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
“Of course I can stop it. I can just say no.”
“You know what he told me?”
“What?”
“That when he loved someone, it was like a trap snapping shut. And that the only way the person could escape his love was to gnaw off their own foot.”
“He never said that.”
“You think I made it up?”
She had a point. She was too unimaginative to come up with something so disgusting and twisted on her own. No, that definitely sounded like my husband-to-be.
“So it was with a guy,” she murmured. “The way you said it, I thought it was just the train.”
“Why would I feel that way about a train?”
“You’re so normal, Eve.”
“I am not.”
“Yes, you are. That’s what you can’t admit. You’re the most normal of all of us. I mean look at you, you’re getting married.”
“Nora’s been married.”
“Yeah, to a serial killer.”
“He was just a murderer,” Nora said. “And that was after we split up.”
It turned out they hadn’t been looking for something to drink. They’d been getting my present. It was this big box done up in white tissue paper and frilly white ribbons. White on white.
“What is it?” I asked suspiciously.
“Open it.”
I didn’t know how. I sat back down and put it on my lap. I didn’t want to tell them that I had never gotten a present before. That we didn’t do that, growing up, for birthdays or holidays or anything. No presents in the Bible. You were never supposed to admit you needed anything. You already had what you needed, if you were blessed, if you were graced with His love. I didn’t want to tell them anything about that, it sounded either too stupid or too right, I couldn’t decide which, so I looked for a way in, but all the ribbons and wrapping looked so perfect.
“Just rip it,” Crystal said.
“Thank you,” I remembered to say. I thought it was better to say it before. Before I saw what it was. “Thank you so much.”
“Do you still see him?” Brandy was asking Nora.
“Once a month. I go upstate. Because we’re still married, technically. So they let us be together. There’s this trailer, right next to the prison.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
It was a box, thin cardboard with pleats at each corner, taped shut. I had to start opening it all over again, running my finger under the edges.
“So what’s in the trailer?”
“They think a camera. But nobody knows where.”
“Gross.”
“It’s not so bad. It’s very basic, but it’s clean. It’s stripped down. I mean, you know why you’re there.”
I got the lid off. Next, there were these white blankets of thick tissue paper. Is this ever going to end, I wondered. I parted them and then almost dug past the present itself, it was so flimsy, a lacy black bra and panties.
“What’s this for?”
“Eve!”
“The trailer,” Brandy said.
Everyone laughed. I was beet-red.
“There’s a book, too,” Crystal said. “Keep going.”
It was a dictionary. English to Russian, Russian to English. I liked it that they didn’t really know what country he came from, what language he spoke. It made me feel like Viktor and I did have a special knowledge of each other. Even if it was sick knowledge. Nora leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. I could feel the invisible shape her lipstick left. Then Brandy and Crystal came over and hugged me, too. The cats thought it was a game. They jumped on my lap, and bounded away again. I was making these horrible sniffling sounds, not knowing what to say, how to act.
“It’s just not what I expected,” I finally got out.
Immediately I wanted to say I didn’t mean the presents, but the emotion, that it was so sad the only way we could feel close was by banding ourselves together against men. Because that’s how it felt, like I was being armed for battle.
Nora was the first to go. She was almost as mysterious as Viktor. I couldn’t imagine her heading home to some ordinary little studio apartment. But I also couldn’t imagine where else she had to be, so drunk now, at noon. The rest of us could barely get up to say good-bye.
“I should go, too,” I said, instead of actually moving, as if expressing the wish could transport me there magically.
“You could stay here, tonight,” Crystal offered.
I looked around. Where did they sleep? I wondered. There was only one other room.
“How do you two know each other, anyway? From the bar?”
“School,” Crystal said.
“School?”
“Cris wanted to come to New York.” Brandy got up and began walking a tightrope, holding her arms out, putting one foot after another. It was a good imitation. You could see her almost falling, the way her body would go over its center of gravity, that point of no return, and then jerk back. She was concentrating hard. She really believed it, that she was high up. “I came along, to make sure she didn’t get in trouble.”
“Her mom.” Crystal gave this other explanation. “There was this guy she let live with them. But he was a real jerk. That’s why we left.”
“I miss my mom.”
“I miss mine, too,” I answered suddenly.
Brandy looked up, just for a second, then went back to balancing. She was making her way someplace, along this imaginary line, walking heel to toe. I remembered how she drank at the bar, all night, so she was even more wasted than me. Crystal watched, making sure she got wherever it was she was going, taking care of her, every minute.
“Eve’s in love,” Brandy said.
She walked right by me, on her way to the bedroom. She raised one arm high, sticking this imaginary parasol up in the air. The fabric of her uniform stretched and her hip flared out. She really did have hips, not an ass. I was drunk enough to see the difference. To see things not from a male point of view. I frowned as she made her way by, oblivious not just to me but to everything. She was sleepwalking. But her course was off. Crystal saw it before I did. She was up instantly. I’d never seen her move so fast. She got there just as Brandy was about to walk into the wall. She was careful not to grab her, just touched her lightly, held her by each h
ip, where I had been staring—Wait, I thought, was I looking there, seeing her body that new way, before or after what just happened? Time got jumbled—and steered her gently through the open doorway.
“Hey,” I suddenly remembered to object. “I am not. In love.”
At least I didn’t think so. And if I was, who with? Maybe she knew and I didn’t. Maybe it was this secret everyone knew but me. Who I loved. Maybe it was obvious.
The door closed. My last glimpse was of Crystal’s heel, kicking backwards, making it shut, while the rest of her was settling Brandy down onto the bed. That’s where they slept. Their private universe.
I cleaned up as much as I could. Everything was already so neat. The mess rested lightly on top, just the opposite of my place, where there was this deep chaos I always struggled to mask. I washed the glasses and lined them up, then looked around for anything more to do so I wouldn’t have to face the fact that I had nothing, no clothes to sleep in, not even my toothbrush. I decided to take a bath.
“Eve?”
Crystal poked her head in about a half hour later. There were bubbles. I had dumped in way more than I meant to. She stared at this mountain of foam rising over the sides of the tub.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I have to pee.”
I had been luxuriating. The floor was covered with fluffy white carpet. All the other surfaces had baskets or glass trays with little soaps and creams. The only thing I dared use was the bubble bath and that had turned out so hilariously I just looked at the rest, reading the backs of the jars, the Instructions for Use. They were all about you, your skin, your eyes, your hair. I stretched out. The water was slippery. It slid off my arms and legs. I lifted my whole body and saw myself emerging from the white perfumy ocean. I wanted to be beautiful, for a change. I was tired of feeling ugly. It was so boring.
Crystal was wearing a big white bathrobe. Her hair was back. I sank down in the hot water, protected by suds.
Eve in the City Page 13