Eve in the City

by Thomas Rayfiel

  “She’s asleep,” she said solemnly.

  I nodded. She sat and looked at me.

  “I love it here,” I said. “Here, I mean. The bathroom.”

  “I did it myself. I did the whole apartment.”

  “It’s great.”

  “She gets that way, late. Usually we’re alone by then, so no one sees.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “She doesn’t remember what she says. When she wakes up.”

  “It’s all right,” I repeated. “It was nice of you both to do this for me. The shower, and everything.”

  “The dictionary was from me.”

  “I figured. Is that true, what she was saying? That it was you who wanted to come here? Originally?”

  She smiled.

  “Her mother’s boyfriend was after her all the time. She didn’t have anyplace else to go.”

  “Why didn’t she tell somebody?”

  “She did. That’s how we ended up leaving. Jane’s mother kicked her out, basically. She didn’t want to hear this guy was a pervert.”

  “Jane?”

  “Oh. Don’t ever tell her I told you that.”

  “Brandy’s real name is Jane?”

  “It’s Brandy.”

  “But what about you? Why did you come? Your family didn’t kick you out, did they?”

  “I had to come. I wanted to rescue her. I mean, she rescued me, so—”

  “Rescued you from what?”

  “I don’t know.” She was so solid, her look just blasted through everything. She never blinked. “Remember that guy at the bar? The one who freaked me out so much?”

  “The one you yelled at? What did he say?”

  “Nothing, really. He just called me a dyke bitch.”

  There were kids upstairs. Little feet pounding over the floor. Put those children to bed, I thought, and then remembered it was the middle of the day. But for us there was this exhausted silence of 3 A.M.

  “If I’d stayed in Menominee, I would have just gone along, done what was expected of me. That’s my nature. It’s hard for me to stand up for myself.”

  “You seem to do a pretty good job of standing up for yourself. Most of the time.”

  “No. I can’t do anything for me. I have to do it for someone else. Someone like Jane.”

  I shook my head.

  “But does she know? I mean, about how you feel?”

  “She does and she doesn’t. Sometimes she says things that are so right-on you can’t believe it. She’s the one who told me about myself. What I was. I know that sounds stupid, but I’m not sure I would ever have figured it out on my own. Not until it was too late. I mean, we’re from Michigan. But on the other hand, she keeps complaining that she never really wanted to come, that I bullied her into it, that she would have gone back. She would have begged her mom to take her in, with that guy still there. So she blames me. She says I use people. She calls me names.”

  “Like what?”

  “Sick. Which I guess I am.”

  I slid deeper into the tub. The water came up to my chin. I was looking at these castles, all bubbles, popping gently, releasing scented steam.

  Crystal got up.

  “I know what will happen. Eventually. She’ll meet someone. Someone just like Roy, probably. And that’ll be that.”

  “Who?”

  “Roy. He was the guy her mother found. Her mom’s just like her. Or she’s just like her mom. I’m not even sure she didn’t want something to happen with Roy. At first, anyway. Then it got ridiculous.” She shook her head. “But by the time it happens again, I’ll be here, instead of Menominee. So maybe she was right. Maybe I was just using her, like she says. Using her to get away.”

  She very quietly lowered the lid. It had a little cloth cover.

  “I’m going to make a sandwich. Do you want anything? You want a candle? There’s a candle that smells like lavender.”

  “Do you have a razor?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  After she left, I soaped up my legs and shaved them. It was no big deal. Then I started poking around all the tubes and jars again. It was time to get beautiful.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Name?”

  “Eve Smith.”

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  I kept waiting for some buzzer to go off, for armed guards to invade the little cubicle and arrest me. But the machine kept up its steady beep. Graph paper came out. It looked damp. He made a mark after each answer, then let it collect in a wet curl on the floor.

  “I’m just going over obvious stuff. Setting the parameters.”

  “The what?”

  “The baseline. So we get a sense of what normal is, for you.”

  The only reason I thought this might work was because it was all happening by accident. I had started out with a big resolution: to buy clothes. Not used, not borrowed, not hand-me-downs, but brand-new clothes that I alone wanted. Instead of a uniform for work or an outfit for a date, I was going to design a whole new look for a whole new me. I mean, if someone like Crystal, who was at least as confused as I was, could make a bathroom, an entire apartment, that looked and felt so right, then why couldn’t I make myself over into an entirely new Young Woman? Every magazine cover and bus ad seemed determined to offer me these options of what to look like, how to act, who to be. It was only a question of making the right choices.

  So I went to Bloomingdale’s.

  Now, this is a house of worship, I thought approvingly. Everyone was charged with excitement, looking wildly around, on the hunt, elbowing, jostling aside, like they didn’t want to let the other person get there first, even though they didn’t know what it was they were trying to get to themselves. There were no windows, just like in a church. Because what you call stained glass windows you can’t really see out of. It’s a trick. You think you’re seeing reality because it’s where the window should be, but it’s not real at all, it’s a picture of, say, Jesus, or some words from the Bible, and since you’re used to seeing the world out a window you think Jesus or the Bible is in the world. But they’re not. They’re just pictures. Bloomingdale’s had mannequins where the windows should be. They were the stained glass of Shopping. You looked at them and took them in the way you would the Savior or a verse of Scripture. At least, I did. The dummies and the clothes they wore gave me this clue as to what kind of attitude I should assume. In life.

  “All right, I’m going to ask you a series of questions. Answer yes or no. Were you previously employed as a sales-person by the Paris Boutique in Chicago, Illinois?”

  “Yes.”

  “And before that, did you receive a degree from”—he looked at my application—“the Des Moines Institute of Fashion?”

  “Yes.”

  I fell in love with a mannequin and decided I wanted to be her. She was reaching out, offering to help, ministering to someone, but at the same time her hip was slouched. She was tall and absolutely unblemished. She wore a white dress with all this detail at the throat and wrists. It was simple but so beautiful. It was my dress. It belonged to me. I belonged to it. We were made for each other.

  “Excuse me. How much is this?”

  “Are you interested?” the lady asked.

  I circled the pedestal until I was dizzy.

  “Is there anyone with you?”

  I looked. Maybe some guardian angel was by my side. The dress spoke to me. Not that I knew what it said, but I would, when I put it on.

  “Most girls come with their mothers,” she said gently. “Or a friend.”

  “Right.” I blushed. Because I saw now this was the bridal shop. It was a wedding dress I was drooling over. “Of course.”

  I couldn’t even tell what the material was. It had all this pattern worked into it. It was different textures in different places, a shiny blinding wall of white, but also soft and inviting, almost cuddly. It wasn’t a gown. It ended above the knee. I really liked that feature, that you could move, down the
aisle, and then break free, run away, right at the altar. Before or after the ceremony, though? Avoid the commitment, the “I do”? Or just the honeymoon, the sex? Because despite all the patterning it was still white. It was the kind of dress that would turn you back into a virgin each time you put it on. It was so formal and ornamental and gorgeous. You’d really feel like a bride. And why shouldn’t I feel like a bride? I wanted that glow, of specialness, of triumph, and I wanted it every day, not just once with a guy and his obnoxious relatives and bad catered food and six screaming babies to follow.

  “I am interested,” I tried saying casually.

  If I really pushed, I sensed I could try it on. But I didn’t need that. For now, I only wanted to look. I would save that sensation, wait until I’d earned it. But how? Very quietly, and just for a second, I practiced the pose the mannequin was making, extending one arm, looking straight ahead, deep into the eyes of the invisible groom. The sounds of the store, of the shoppers all around me, didn’t fall away exactly, it’s more like they came together, the way music does sometimes when you don’t realize it’s there, when you’re not listening for it. All the buzz of conversation, the click of hangers, the chatter of cash registers pumping out receipts, even the hum of the hidden lights, matched up and canceled out the chaos to make this mystical harmony. And out of that harmony came a revelation.

  “Is there an employee discount?”

  I don’t know what barrier I had crossed. I didn’t even stop to think if it was good or bad. I went to the eighth floor (Staff Only) and asked to fill out a job application. My pen flew over the blanks, making up everything, a past, a future, whatever I needed to get hired. I wouldn’t have to work here long. I wanted that dress. I could visit it during breaks, like you visit a chapel, when I wasn’t busy stocking the shelves with packets of panty hose or refolding tried-on outfits from the Junior Department. Whatever mindless, menial, entry-level chores they found for me. I wanted it so much that, for the first time, I was willing to lie.

  “Just a few more questions.”

  I felt this unshakable confidence. Things were going my way. They had looked at my application and said there might be a position available. A man came down to talk to me. Then a woman. I was dressed right, I was acting right. They were impressed by my experience. I was, too. I talked about the kind of clothes we sold at the Chicago store. How the owners, this elderly couple, trusted me so much I was left to close up some nights. I let them in on my dream of designing a line of evening wear. I thought that was good, considering I didn’t know what evening wear was. They looked at each other. Where did it all come from? It sounded more real than my so-called real life, certainly more plausible. That’s what I liked about it. I was coming across as this fresh-faced, slightly clothes-crazy girl from the Midwest. This person who maybe I was, but didn’t feel like, most of the time. And who would work for practically nothing. “To learn,” I said eagerly. They smiled again. And, oh yes, I managed to find out there was an employee discount. Forty percent! I was smiling so hard my face hurt.

  “Have you ever been arrested?”

  Then, as a kind of afterthought, they sent me back to this dingy bunch of rooms (it was weird how dirty everything was behind the scenes, like they had to make up for how clean and light they kept the store itself, the part the customers saw) and had this guy attach black rubber leeches to my wrists and temples. The same places I had dabbed Brandy and Crystal’s perfume. Pressure points. Where my pulse pounded. At first I thought it was all over. A lie detector, blowing to smithereens the innocent Eve I had created. But my momentum was so strong it rode over the machine’s objections. I watched the needle nod drowsily in time with the man behind it. Of course, I considered more sensibly, it’s because I lied from the start, about the things people don’t usually try to conceal. My name. My age. My history. So he never got to establish what was a regular rhythm for me. What “normal” was. Now the problem was, did I have to keep on lying? If I suddenly started telling the truth, would that screw things up in the other direction, start registering just as wildly as a lie?

  “Arrested? No,” I tried experimentally.

  The needle jumped. The beeps the machine made, it was like those heart monitors in hospitals, came faster, almost double. I glimpsed the graph paper, on its way down to the floor, and saw he had made a small “x,” not a check like before.

  It wasn’t fair! I wanted to say. I never had been arrested. That was the truth. It was those other things that were lies. My name and who I was and where I’d been.

  “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”

  “A felony? Well, how could I be convicted of a felony if I was never arrested? I mean, is that a trick question?”

  Maybe this was really an intelligence test, in disguise.

  He didn’t make any mark next to that.

  “Answer the question yes or no, please. Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”

  I was back on the street. I saw her eyes, this look of complicity, like we were in this together. But that didn’t count, did it? He meant convicted in a court of law, not by some guilty conscience.

  “No.”

  His whole manner changed. Before, he had been bored. Now he was puzzled. It didn’t make sense. It’s almost like he knew I was telling the truth and couldn’t figure out why it was coming out on his machine as lies.

  “Have you ever committed a crime?” he tried again.

  “What crime?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  I had to find a way to lie and tell the truth at the same time. We were both staring at the machine. Slowly I said, “Yes,” and watched as the needle resumed its nice even course, listened to the beeps fall soothingly back into their evenly spaced intervals.

  “Yes,” I repeated, for the pleasure of telling the truth, of having what I knew, what I sensed, all along, confirmed, finally, the guilty pleasure of admitting that we had conspired, the mystery girl and I. That we had something in common. “Of course I’ve committed a crime. Who hasn’t?”

  “Well,” he said, not knowing what to ask next.

  That was the end of my dream. The man and woman who interviewed me said there was nothing available now, but that I should keep in touch. Yeah, right. I slunk out of the store. It was still light. For some reason I expected it to be dark. Well, it would be dark soon enough, or just had been, moments ago. I was all turned around. I couldn’t remember if it was sunrise or sunset, if the day or the night was behind or before me. What difference did it make? Everything was its own opposite.

  Stop it, I scolded. Get a grip. Now, exactly what have you just been doing?

  Shopping for clothes. Applying for a job. On the surface, they seemed like such rational activities. I always thought I was being bold and crazy and then discovered later I was doing exactly what was expected of me. The most conventional things in the world.

  A breeze sliced through me. The sun left a purple stain. I read off a man’s watch 6:15. He caught me looking and smiled. I smiled back, but that was it. I was standing still, up against the department store window, and he was being carried away by this river of people. I stared at the back of his head. I couldn’t have said what he looked like, only what time he had. The way men sized you up, sized you down. Did I ever do that? When I looked at a man, I searched for his watch, because I didn’t have one of my own. I didn’t like the idea of a watch, the weight, the ticking. But I always wanted to know what time it was. As if I had to be somewhere. Men had time. I had something else. What? Someplace to be. A magical destination. Maybe men could tell me where. Maybe that was their appeal, if there was one. Or maybe they were just road-blocks. Obstacles. Sunset. I got my bearings, took on the responsibility of being me again. I wasn’t crazy. Like Brandy said, I was normal. I was the most normal girl on earth. That’s what made me so crazy. Evening. I slipped back into the flood, let it carry me along.

  “What do you mean, you might have committed a crime? You don’t know?”

/>   “Well, it all depends.”

  “Depends on what?

  “On what she was doing. I mean if it was self-defense, if she was getting raped, that’s one thing. But if she wasn’t, then maybe I’m an accessory after the fact.”

  “What fact?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the one who gave me the idea.”

  “Me!”

  He didn’t like it here, Detective Jourdain. I hadn’t picked very carefully. It was the scummiest, least cushiony, least fancy place around. There were wooden booths and wobbly stools. The smell of cigarettes was overpowering. Still, it was packed with people just off work, shouting with relief. We leaned forward to hear each other. His breath smelled of mint.

  “All I did was ask you questions.”

  “Yeah, well, you made me think.”

  “My apologies.”

  He looked at my glass. It was empty. I could tell he was wondering what to do, if he should ask did I want another? He couldn’t know this was already my second. Although maybe he did. After all, he was a detective. What did he think I’d been doing in the time it took him to get here?

  I had called (his card was furry around the edges, I had been holding it, clutching it so long, without even realizing what it was) and asked him to meet me.

  “Where are you?”

  I found out from the bartender.

  “What are you doing there?”

  “I have no idea.” I took a deep breath of stinky air. It wasn’t just smoke. It was the history of ground-out butts, billions of them, fifty years’ worth. “That’s why I’m calling, I guess. Because I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing.”

  It felt good to ask for help. He didn’t ask for details. He just came, dropped everything because he heard I was in trouble. But by the time he got there I wasn’t so desperate anymore, because I knew he was coming and because I was just starting my second martini, which I hoped he would assume was my first. I don’t know why I ordered a martini to begin with. I guess I wanted to be sophisticated. Maybe I wanted to turn this into a date. I was still looking for my first one, although calling a policeman and telling him you might have committed a crime probably wasn’t the best way to go about it. But you have to talk about something, right? You have to be interesting. That’s always the problem.