Who forgot me when he moved away, and moved on.
The night is peeling itself back, opening up, the beer flooding through my veins. Through cracks in the crowd, I watch him kiss her, softly, one hand gently stroking a lock of her hair, twining it through his fingers. I drink one, then another, and one more, like water, water, water.
A fissure begins inside me and it’s an ugly thing. For all the people here, I am utterly alone. I let the plastic cup drop from my fingers and run.
I can hear Mikey shouting for me, but I don’t stop. The bars downtown are just starting to close; dismayed, disheveled people are being popped back out onto the street, lurching into me, bouncing away as I push through them.
He shouts my name again and then his hand is pulling on my arm. “Stop! Charlie, just stop.”
“Go back,” I sputter. “To your girlfriend.” I’m weaving a little from the beer. I haven’t drunk anything in so long, my eyes are already starting to blur. I wonder if he can tell that I drank.
He sighs heavily, clenching his jaw. “Bunny and I have been going out for a while now and yeah, I should have told you right away, but honestly, what’s the big deal here?”
I start walking away quickly, but he follows me, muttering, “I’m not going to let you walk home alone, Charlie.” I don’t look back, but I can hear him following me, the slight squeak of his sneakers on the pavement.
Three men are slumped on the steps of my building, bare chests shining in the heat. They pass a paper bag back and forth. They squint up at us, nod politely.
I stumble going up the sixteen steps to the second floor and almost knock out a tooth. Swearing, I push myself back up. Mikey says, “Jesus, you okay, Charlie?” But I don’t stop. The stairwell light is out and I jam the key around the lock in my door, finally hitting the slot. I try to shut the door on Mikey, but he pushes at it gently and steps inside.
“Charlie, come on,” he says finally. I ignore him. I’m afraid if I say anything, I’ll cry. After unlacing my boots, I put them as neatly as possible in the corner of the room. I turn on the standing lamp. I make a practice, just like I used to when my mother was in one of her rages, of making things as orderly as possible. I straighten my sketchbooks on the card table. I put my pens and pencils in the glass jar. The plaid blanket flares out before me as I settle it softly on the futon. It was bad, really bad, to drink that beer, because now I’ve loosened something inside. I’ve chinked away at a wall I didn’t know would be so important and now I want my tender kit. I want him to leave. I need my tender kit.
Roar of ocean, swirl of tornado. I’m being swallowed.
Mikey sighs. “Is this going to be like it was with Ellis and that guy all over again? Come on, Charlie. You’re older than that now.”
I whirl around, blood in my ears.
When Ellis took up with that boy, he stepped into my place beside her, easy as a chess move, and I was nudged to the edge. I was so angry, and hurt.
I didn’t think I’d be on Mikey’s edge.
“What’s the problem here, Charlie?” His voice is tired and blurry. “Talk to me. You’re acting all weird, all jeal—”
He stops suddenly, his mouth dropping open. He’s still standing in front of the door. I turn my head away, flushes of shame threading my skin.
“Just get out,” I whisper. I can feel waves of tears behind my eyes.
“Oh my God. Did you…you thought we…that I…” He lets out an enormous breath all at once and covers his face. Behind his hands comes a muffled “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Just get out, please. It’s fine. It’s nothing. I’m cool, just go.” Blathering, staring at the wall, anywhere but at him. Gritting my teeth so hard my jaw hurts. I’m mortified.
But he doesn’t. What he does is even worse, because he’s Mikey, because he’s nice.
He comes over to me and puts his arms around me. “I’m sorry, Charlie. If I did anything to lead you on, I didn’t mean to. The last thing I’d want is to hurt you.”
But it makes it even worse, being held by him, being warm inside the cocoon of his arms, because when he angles his head to look down at me, and his breath is warm on my face, and his eyes are so sad and he is just so near to me, I kiss him.
And for a second, just a blip of a white-hot second, he kisses me back.
And then he pushes me away.
And wipes his mouth.
Because of course he would wipe his mouth.
“No, Charlie,” he says. “No, I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that.”
I shut my eyes so hard I see red clouds pulsing inside my eyelids.
“Please just get the fuck out, okay?”
When I open them, he’s gone, and the door’s closed. I turn off the lamp, because I need the dark right now.
I can still feel the press of his mouth on mine, the nanosecond of warmth it gave me. But it doesn’t stop the flood of shame I feel: how stupid am I, echoing through my whole body. Like Louisa said, “Nobody normal will love us.”
I’ve already broken one of Casper’s rules: I drank. And I want to break another, but I don’t want to, Idon’tIdon’tIdon’tIdon’t, and so I get my tender kit from under a pile of clothes, and cover it with the plaid blanket, and then cover it with a bunch of shirts, and then my boots, and then I shove it into Louisa’s suitcase and wedge the whole thing way back under the claw-foot tub, where I can’t see it.
I practice those fucking stupid breath balloons for as long as I can, until I’m practically wheezing, and then I find my sketchbook, because drawing is my words, it’s the things I can’t say, and I let loose in the pages with a story about a girl who thought a boy liked her, and maybe could save her from herself, but in the end she was just stupid, stupid, because she’s a fucking freak, but if she could just make it through the night, there was going to be another chance, another day.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
My fingers start to hurt just as the sun starts to rise. I finally put down the charcoal when the first colors come in the window, soft and golden. I drink a cup of water and listen to people using the toilet down the hall, the sounds of Leonard shuffling to the porch to drink coffee out of his pink mug.
My head is bursting from the beer. My eyes hurt and my mouth tastes terrible. I’m grateful that I don’t have to be back at True Grit for two more days. I peel off my clothes and sink to the futon and fall into a deep sleep.
—
When I wake up, it’s the afternoon, and my room is sweltering hot. I made it through the night, but I’m still jittery and tense. I want to talk to someone, but the only person I know is Mikey, and now I’ve probably ruined that. I decide to go to the library and email Casper. Like, maybe I should tell her I’ve failed, now, by drinking, by throwing myself at Mikey.
Outside, the heat is stifling already, but I don’t want to not wear my overalls because I feel more comfortable, protected, somehow, with them on. I go back into the apartment building and knock on Leonard’s door. He lends me a pair of scissors without a word. Upstairs, I cut a couple of pairs of overalls off at the knee. That way, I might be cooler, but my thighs are still hidden.
I’m sweating profusely by the time I get to the library. Everyone else seems so cool, even in this heat. Maybe I’ll get used to it after a while. There’s a thermometer outside the library. Ninety-seven degrees and not a cloud in sight.
I log on. I reply to Blue first, because I know she’ll know how I feel, exactly.
Dear Blue,
I am my own worst disaster. I did something stupid to someone. I just wanted to feel better. My own body is my deepest enemy. It wants, it wants, it wants, and when it does not get, it cries and cries and I punish it. How can you live in fear of your very self ? What is going to happen to us, Blue?
I wait, stupidly, like she’s going to respond right away. Of course she can’t—she’ll have to wait to sneak a turn at the computer and who knows when that will happen. But just writing it eases something in me.
And then I write to Casper, because I should tell her what I did. I tell her I drank three beers, that I tried to kiss Mikey, that I did kiss Mikey, and that he didn’t like it. But I also tell her I didn’t cut, even though not cutting made me exhausted.
I press Send. I just sit at the terminal for a little while, watching the people in the library. The longer I sit and watch them as they pick books, whisper on their phones, fall asleep in chairs, the more lonely I feel, the more weighted down inside. Everyone seems to have a grip on life but me. When is anything going to get better?
Mikey is waiting on the front steps of the building when I get back, a grocery sack next to him on the top step. I panic a little and start to walk past him, but he pulls the buds from his ears and grabs my hand.
He says, “Hey. Charlie. Don’t do this shit, okay? Sit down.”
I drop down heavily, avoiding his eyes, trying to block out the scent of him, the nearness.
Down the block, the line outside the plasma bank moves like a slow snake. I wipe sweat from my forehead self-consciously. I bet Bunny never sweats.
“Hey, look what I brought for you.” Mikey parts the top of the grocery sack so I can see what’s inside: a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, an apple, and an orange. I sigh. I’m so sick of peanut butter.
I pull out the apple, rub my thumbs over its shininess. “Thank you,” I say softly.
He clears his throat. “What happened, that can’t happen again. That was…not good. Kissing.”
A stinging, a tightening in my chest. Angrily, I say, “You kissed back, you know, before you…didn’t.”
“And you drank. I tasted the beer. You promised.”
“I’m sorry.” It’s a whisper, spoken to the sidewalk.
“Is that the only thing you’ve had to drink since you’ve been here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Yes!”
He sighs. “Charlie, do you know why I decided to go to college all the way out here? You and Ellis were exhausting. Your little games with each other, with me, that shit tired me out. Did you ever realize that? Probably not. You two were so wrapped up in yourselves.”
“You came to the hospital. You said you didn’t want me to die. I just thought…” My voice cracks. I press my head against my knees to block him out. I want to cry all over again. I thought, I thought? What did I think? That Mikey would like me, dumb little me?
“Of course I don’t want you to die! I never want you to die. You’re my friend. But I didn’t mean that I…that we…”
Mikey goes silent. After a while he says, “This is what it is, Charlie. I’m here, but I’m with somebody. I’ve moved forward. Coming out here really changed something for me. I’ve moved on. I made goals for myself. I want to help you get better, and I will, but I can only help you if you want to be helped.”
I lift up my head, blinking in the daylight. Mikey looks at me head-on.
“Okay?” he asks. He takes my hand. “Are we okay?”
What else am I supposed to say? “Okay,” I answer. “Okay.”
He stands up, all business, pulling me with him. The apple tumbles off my lap. Like the good person he is, he jogs down to the sidewalk to get it.
I’ve agreed to meet Mikey at a gallery downtown after he gets off work. He’s drawn a map to a place not far from my building. At first, I consider not going. I’ll just feel awkward, and Bunny will probably be there, too, but then I decide to go. I only have one friend here, and he’s it, and maybe sometime I won’t feel like such a jerk around him. Casper would probably be proud of me for that. I change into another pair of overalls and a long-sleeved jersey shirt and slide my key and the lapis stone into my pocket.
The gallery is in the middle of the smallish downtown, not far from where I got off the Greyhound, on the third floor of a pink building wedged between a bar and a diner called the Grill. The gallery is narrow, crowded and deep with creaky floorboards and an aroma of dark wine and exotic cheese. There are a lot of older people dressed in black with silver jewelry and clean, styled hair. I’m glad I wore my hoodie over my overalls; I feel a little awkward and out of place here. It feels better to burrow in it, to know I can pull the hood up if I need to. I notice Mikey talking to Ariel in the corner. I breathe a sigh of relief: Bunny doesn’t seem to be anywhere around. They wave me over.
I look down at the bright jewels on Ariel’s sleek, flat sandals, so shiny next to my grubby boots. Did Ariel ever wear clunky clothes and hide her body? She seems eons away from anything like that. She was probably born sexy.
Ariel takes a sip of her wine. “Charlie! You’re here!”
Mikey says, “Hey, Charlie, glad you made it.” He socks me lightly on the shoulder. I give him a small smile. “This stuff is a trip, don’t you think?” He wanders away to look at the paintings.
Ariel leans down close to me, conspiratorially, like we’re best girlfriends or something. “What do you think, Charlie? My friend Antonio worked very hard on these.”
I look around carefully. They just seem like triangles and squares to me, painted in primary colors. I shrug. “They’re really bright.” I try to imagine what it would be like to have my drawings in a place like this, or any place, really. But who would come see a bunch of drawings and comics about loser kids? Or even the sketches I’ve been doing at night, alone in my room, of Mikey, of Riley? My dad?
“Boat paint.” Ariel takes another glass of wine from the buffet table. There are little pieces of bread in the shapes of hands. I nibble one. “It really shines, doesn’t it? I’m so glad he doesn’t burn his paintings anymore. So bad for his lungs, but he thought it necessary. He used to do that, you know, years ago, when we were both just frisky pups in the desert, smoking our brains out with hash and laying anybody who cracked a smile at us.”
I choke a little on the bread-hand.
“But,” she continues, examining the rings on her fingers, “he was in a Kiefer stage then. We all have our Kiefer stages, when we want to destroy ourselves in order to create. To see if that’s beautiful, too.”
She gestures across the room at a very handsome man with slick, blackish hair wound into a ponytail. He’s barefoot, wearing a gleaming gray suit and what looks like an immensely heavy turquoise necklace. “That’s him. Tony Padilla. He’s going to sell the shit out of these paintings. What about you? How is your drawing coming along? Sometimes I catch myself thinking of your drawing. That one, the man with the pills for teeth.”
“My dad.” It comes out before I can stop myself. I pinch my thigh. Stupid.
Ariel looks at me, her face softening a little. I wonder what she’s thinking.
“I see,” she says. She sips her wine. “Well, it was very good. All wrong, of course, but good. You’re not confident in that type of line work—I can tell. You need some classes. I’m teaching a workshop this July in my studio. Drawing and portraiture. Weekend warriors sort of thing for the retired set. It pays the bills, and I do love them. Unlike most of the students in my U classes, they try. They want. They don’t just assume that art belongs to them.”
“I don’t…I mean, I have a job now, but it’s just washing dishes. I don’t have any money. Sorry.”
“I know you have no money. I was once a starving artist, too. You can come and sit in. You can help me clean the studio after. How about that?” She swirls wine in her mouth, surveying the crowd of people. Her eyes move rapidly, lighting on one person, resting, then searching for another, like a bird looking for the perfect branch.
“I think, Charlie, you have talent. I do. But I don’t think you’ll get far until you examine yourself and study. Until you let yourself be your subject. That’s the exquisiteness of youth: you are allowed the luxury of vanity, of self-examination. Take it! Don’t be ashamed of yourself.”
I don’t understand half of what she just said and I know I should probably say thank you, but instead, what comes out in a rush is “Why are you being so nice to me? You don’t even know
me.”
“Because when everything is said and done, Charlotte, the world runs on kindness. It simply has to, or we’d never be able to bear ourselves. It might not seem so to you now, but it will when you’re older.” Her voice is very fierce. She takes a large sip of her wine and looks straight at me.
She says, “And I do know you. I know you, Charlie.”
And for just that moment, I think I see a terrible cloud of sadness pass over her eyes.
But Mikey comes tumbling back, excited and out of breath, and Ariel’s face returns to being smooth and cool.
“I wish I had tons of money,” Mikey chatters. “I’d buy one of these. These are fucking cool.”
“Maybe that band you are always driving around will finally hit it big, Michael, and you can buy all the paintings you want.” Ariel laughs. “Charlie doesn’t like these paintings.”
“It’s not that!” I say quickly, feeling a little embarrassed. “It’s just…I like a story, I guess. I like faces, or people doing things. These seem kind of like just painting colors…to paint colors?” Talking like this makes me nervous. Nobody has ever really talked to me about art before, and I wonder if I’m saying all the wrong things.
Ariel gazes at me. “Colors by themselves can be a story, too, Charlie. Just a different kind. Come to my class. I’ll give Mikey the info. It was good, Charlie, to see you. Mikey, your rent is due, sweetheart.” She lays a hand on my arm and waves to someone across the room, drifting away.
Mikey raises his eyebrows. “Wow, Charlie, that’s cool. Ariel wants to teach you? That’s totally positive. Ariel Levertoff’s kind of a big deal, you know.” He beams at me and I let myself smile back, grateful to be caught in a good moment with him, even if it hurts a little to be so close to him. I make a mental note to look up Kiefer and Ariel Levertoff the next time I’m at the library.
He holds up two tiny bread-hands and we pretend to do battle. I don’t even care that some of the people in the gallery are staring at us like we’re just dumb kids, or that when he leaves tonight, it will be to go back to Bunny, probably, and stay the night with her. Ariel likes my drawings, she likes me, I think, and Mikey is with me. And after he walks me home, when I read the note taped to my apartment door, my heart feels even lighter, in a weird way: Come and wake me up. Five-thirty tomorrow. I promise I won’t bite this time. R
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