Carousel Court

by Joe McGinniss

  “What is it?”

  “Trust me.”

  The hissing sound is isobutyl nitrite. She inhales the compressed air, which is pungent.

  “Hold it in.” He slides his free arm around her hips, across her abdomen, and in one motion he’s lifting her, positioning himself behind her. “Exhale until there’s nothing left.”

  “Goddamn,” she says, and the room goes white and she feels him again and all tension leaves her body as if Klonopin were a mist and she’s drinking it.

  42

  Nick wanders outside and the stench of burning plastic greets him. Their neighbor has today’s fire going. Nick walks to the fence, can’t see through the cracks in it, so pulls himself up, looks over. The young neighbor is shirtless and pissing into a decent-­sized fire. A plastic lawn chair melts in the orange flames. Of course Phoebe stays away for days. Who wouldn’t? He snaps a picture of the young man and the fire, texts it to her: Wish you were here!!

  Back inside he composes a to-do list on his iPhone: seven addresses for rent collection from properties in Lake Elsinore, Corona, and Chula Vista; the total amount of cash he’ll collect from the seven houses ($9,475); block watch after that with Metzger and Kostya; Jackson’s pediatrician appointment next week (MEDS for his breathing).

  He drank too much to be driving. But rents are due or overdue for most of the tenants and he can’t sleep and he’s on his own, Jackson at Mai’s until tomorrow morning, so he’ll collect what he can tonight. All the windows are rolled down and Nick’s black T-shirt is tight, his jeans ripped above the knee from a recent job, a wrought-iron fence that wouldn’t budge. He smokes a clove cigarette and turns up some mix on the hip-hop station. The full moon is yellow and rotting.

  He sends Phoebe a text. What if I knew where you were? What if I came by to say hello?

  His handheld vibrates. It’s been three days. He’s texted and called so many times. He’s been enraged, worried, terrified. He’s threatened, promised, and begged. He’s cried. He’s considered the deep end of the pool, plastic bags and ropes cinched around his neck. He held Jackson too tight. He took him to the zoo. They watched the elephants and lions. A dead white rabbit tossed to the cheetah. Some turned away. Nick and Jackson watched the clean white fur turn crimson and then disappear. No more rabbit.

  You don’t know where I am.

  The fuck I don’t.

  Tell me

  I don’t have to tell you shit.

  Go to bed. It’s all good. Be home tomorrow.

  Don’t come home. Someone might mistake u for an intruder home-­invading gangster and shoot u on sight.

  Nick don’t drink and text.

  Not a game babe. I will pull the fucking trigger.

  43

  Imagine a week together. A month,” JW says, not looking up from his iPhone, tapping out a message.

  Phoebe’s dressed, her hair damp from a long shower. She sits on the edge of a low purple chair. She crosses her legs.

  “Imagine seeing each other whenever we want.”

  “I do.”

  “We can’t do that with you out here.”

  “We just did.”

  “You don’t belong out here. You’ll get restless. Bored.”

  “Maybe.” She starts checking her own iPhone.

  “All the driving.”

  Messages from Nick asking rhetorical questions about her likeness to her own mother and if she shouldn’t just make her escape permanent and an offer to send her things wherever she lands. Paid for with my sweaty cash, he wrote.

  “Didn’t you almost kill your kid from driving too much?”

  “What are you even doing out here?” she asks, slips her phone into her purse.

  “Firing people,” he says without looking up, reads a message, mutters something to himself, then slides the phone into the pocket of his linen pants.

  “Suits you.”

  “So you really want this thing,” he says. “D&C.” He’s staring at her, studying, his shades on his head.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a career.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you take my advice?”

  “Which was what? You talked a lot,” she says.

  “And you didn’t listen. Business school. Something bigger instead of always playing it so goddamn safe.”

  “How safe am I playing it?”

  “You drive ten hours a day. Come on, bathrobes and Caribbean cruises?” he says.

  “And now I’m doing something about it.”

  He laughs. “So work me, then. Like you worked me before. And no, I’m not expecting you to pay me back anytime soon.”

  “Well, that was the deal. I agreed I would and I will. End of discussion.”

  He shakes his head, changes the subject. “I wonder if you can handle it. This isn’t just sitting at a desk with Hawaiian-shirt days and Secret Santa. You meet and exceed expectations or you’re gone. Back behind the wheel. And that’s not a transition I’d wish on anyone. And unlike in Boston or New York, out here I won’t have your back.”

  Her head throbs. “What’s my trajectory? Tell me specifically. You know me. Where do you see me?”

  “Consulting, maybe. Financial services or analysis. A promotion track,” he says with nonchalance. “That’s what D&C will be. But it’s cutthroat. No margin for error.”

  “Just like that.”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “So D&C, then.”

  “Back east is easier.”

  “This is what I want.”

  She slides her hand into the front pocket of his loose pants and removes his iPhone. She opens the image files and pages through pictures of JW and his family: riding horses, skiing, on a cold-looking beach, making Belgian waffles with fresh strawberries and powdered sugar in a massive kitchen with Viking stoves and a black granite island.

  “What do you think they’ll offer?” she asks. “Where can I expect to be in three years, five years?” She stares blankly at the knit royal-­blue monogram on his shirt pocket. He moves closer, presses against her. He kisses her on the mouth. His lips are dry. Her eyes stay open and she doesn’t kiss him back.

  “You feel what you do to me?”

  The door is closed now. When did he close it? Was she asleep, passed out, at some point? She can’t be sure either way, is dizzy thinking about it. And his tight grip on her wrists. White heat radiates from the top of her spine, splitting her scalp and spilling out from her pores. She closes her eyes tightly. Let go, she thinks, or maybe she’s saying it. She’s going to be sick.

  “I think,” she says, “I actually need you to leave.”

  He laughs. She pulls her wrists from his grip.

  “I need to rest. I can’t with you here.”

  He does this thing to her earlobe with his index finger and thumb, gently massages, then pinches it. “That’s why I love you,” he says. “Unafraid to bite the hand.”

  Hardly, she thinks.

  Later, having slept dreamlessly for hours, Phoebe is on the freeway. She doesn’t see the blue Boxster flashing its headlights at her in the rearview, trying to get her out of the way because she’s going too slow, reading another text from JW: Your optimism is heartening.

  She changes lanes, then again. She accelerates toward a looming exit sign. She doesn’t read it but follows it, pulls off the freeway and onto surface streets, turns in to a strip mall parking lot, and stops.

  Is it unfounded?

  A long pause between text messages. Phoebe taps one out, quickly, sloppily: D&C. That’s it and you know it.

  De Bent.

  I know. I did. Haven’t heard.

  Will take care of it.

  Tell me when you call him.

  You’re welcome ;)

  This isn’t a game.

 
Laguna’s pretty far.

  She taps out a response: We’ll move.

  You’re not messing around.

  No. I’m not.

  Was SO good to see you. Forgot how insane you make me.

  I feel like shit.

  You shouldn’t.

  Her cell rings. It’s him. She doesn’t pick up.

  You’re too hard on yourself.

  This will kill me.

  • •

  At dusk the next day, while Nick gives Jackson a bath, Phoebe sits alone by the pool, sips Maker’s Mark. She and Nick haven’t spoken except for four words since he got home from work. He saw her, shook his head, said, “I’m going to sleep,” and walked upstairs, closed and locked the bedroom door. She returned that day, midafternoon, to a hushed, empty house. It was cool and smelled clean. And there was order where there had been chaos: clothes folded and put away, the laptop desk cleared of mail and empty cups. It made her tired for some reason. Her legs make intersecting circles in the glowing water, the cicadas crying out at the end of a hot, clear Monday in October, four months since Nick pulled the steering wheel of the dirty white Subaru sharply to the left, almost missing the turn in to a deserted sunbaked Carousel Court. A new phase is taking shape, coming into focus: the life they came out here for, by other means.

  So I may need you closer than Laguna Beach.

  She waits. He wants her to ask. She won’t.

  He sends three texts in quick succession:

  Aren’t you going to ask?

  Closer to what?

  Me

  44

  Phoebe complied with Nick’s request: Don’t be home when I get there.

  He doesn’t know where she is today, if she’ll stay away for three more days, but he’s leaving in an hour, after Jackson is down for his nap and Mai arrives. Nick texts: Can’t stand to be around you. Violently sick inside to share the same space. Will text when Mai arrives and be here an hour after that. She works harder than you with OUR son and deserves a break.

  There’s more to it, Nick.

  It’s him. There’s not more to it. There never will be more to it.

  You have no money Nick. Where are you even going?

  You don’t know shit. You don’t have a clue.

  45

  When she arrives home from work, it’s late, almost nine. Since her three days at Hotel Bamboo, they haven’t talked. Tonight, her second night back, she finds Nick asleep on the couch with his boots on. He smells like stale cigarette smoke even though he doesn’t smoke. It must be the guys he works with. She imagines they carried trash from a house today, then went somewhere and drank and smoked. On the dining room table is an expensive-looking juicer.

  Her first night home from her hotel stay: wordless. Nick was feeding Jackson, took him from his booster seat and carried his tray of chicken tenders and mashed peas and juice past her, and she tried to take Jackson but Nick angled him away, burst past her, took Jackson upstairs to finish his dinner and play in his room, locked the door behind him. He does that again now. He hasn’t kept Jackson downstairs the past two days when she’s around. That’s how it is now. Since she spent the nights away and since he doesn’t believe her when she tells him she was alone.

  46

  Each day since Phoebe’s three-day disappearance, Nick spends thirteen hours out of the house, working houses, performing initial assessments for the company, playing landlord for himself. When he finally returns, he finds Phoebe sitting by the pool, smoking a cigarette, a glass of wine sitting next to her on one side, Jackson in a diaper and nothing else on the other. She makes small circles in the water with her feet. Everything—the thick grass, the wet bar, the wilting palms and the brown fence surrounding the property, his wife and son—is bathed in sepia light. But Jackson sits perilously close to the edge, drinking from a sippy cup. It’s jarring. Nick approaches his son, trying not to startle him, not wanting him to fall into the pool. He’ll sink like a stone. In one athletic motion, Nick squats and scoops him up and pulls him to his chest. He turns and walks back inside the house, closes the door behind him. He waits there for a moment, watching her. She doesn’t turn around, doesn’t even seem to notice that her son is no longer there, that Nick took him away.

  Nick sends her a text: Where is Jackson?

  She reads it. She turns her head, left then right. Alarmed at his absence, she stands. Nick flicks the patio light off, the kitchen light on. Their eyes meet. He whispers to Jackson, who does what his daddy tells him to.

  Jackson waves and they leave.

  • •

  The Monday before they were scheduled to leave Boston, they went to brunch. College Hunks Hauling Junk came and left a week before, took what wouldn’t fit in the Forester. Nick and Phoebe slept on the air mattress for six nights, Jackson between them. Phoebe stopped working on Friday. That Monday morning she didn’t take Jackson to day care, and this pissed Nick off. He expected, needed, it to be just the two of them, no distractions. It was overcast and humid; Nick’s T-shirt stuck to his back. At the restaurant they sat outside with Jackson in a wooden high chair, with crayons and a paper place mat. They should have sat inside, cooler and less crowded. Jackson scribbled madly. Nick looked past his son, past Phoebe, at traffic that didn’t move. The air was filled with exhaust and the day felt nothing like late spring, more like the dead of summer.

  “There’s no job,” he said. “They emailed yesterday and called today. They’re very sorry, though.” Nick watched a stalled bus spew black smoke from the rear. “They’re very sorry. I mean, so, so sorry.” He drifted off, couldn’t meet Phoebe’s eyes.

  Jackson dropped some crayons. Neither parent moved.

  Phoebe wasn’t hearing him, not processing. “You’re not serious.”

  “They’re very sorry,” Nick said again, finally looking at his wife. He’d promised himself after he hung up on them that morning, after he found himself pleading for part-time, or for independent contractor status, or for severance, for recommendations for other work, that he’d project confidence with Phoebe, reassurance.

  “Nick,” she said. “Come on.”

  “Unprecedented times. That’s what they told me.”

  Phoebe was scooping up crayons from the floor. “It’s kind of funny. I guess.” She handed the crayons to Jackson. “But not really. I mean, if you had no job, we would have—What would we have?”

  Silence. Nick stared at Phoebe. He did this: He met her eyes and wouldn’t look away when he was serious. He’d say nothing and would just stare into her green eyes until she got it. When he asked her to marry him; when he told her that his father had died; when he promised she’d be okay during the cesarean; when he told her she deserved time to be a mother.

  “You have an offer.”

  He nodded.

  “You accepted—come on. Enough.” She smiled.

  “I’ll find work. I’m already talking to people.” That was a lie, but now he didn’t look away.

  “You’re serious,” she said, swallowed. She hummed to herself and said, “Okay, okay,” under her breath. She sat back and squeezed her eyes shut tightly. She was processing. She pressed two fingers to her forehead. She seemed in pain. “We have—We both quit our jobs, Nick,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “This is—” She stopped. Her lips disappeared inside her mouth. Her face was flush. “We have the house. A mortgage. Payments. We have those now.”

  Nick stared at her.

  “Stop staring at me and say something.”

  “We’re fine.”

  She exhaled and lost all pretense of holding up, keeping a brave face. She deflated. “I needed time with him, Nick. More than anything. Now there’s no time.”

  “I can fix this,” he said lamely. “We’ll still come out ahead on the flip. I’ll find something. We go. We go.”

  “I though
t you were going to tell me something—” She stopped. She was going to bring it up this morning if he didn’t, but for some reason that day she was convinced he was going to say it: They should try to get pregnant again. That there was no better time. That pieces were finally falling into place, a new phase was beginning, their adult life was coming together, and was there a more beautiful way to commemorate that golden time in your life than conceiving a child?

  “We go, Phoebe. We just roll with it. It works out.”

  “I quit my job, Nick. I quit my job.”

  “I never insisted you quit. Look, we just do it differently for a while. There are other jobs. We’re still doing it. You realize,” he said, more to convince himself, “how many people wish they had the balls to do what we’re doing? How easy it would be to just accept what we have and inch along, another fucking Boston winter? Another year and another and the next. No, we’re doing this, and guess what? We’re doing it right.”

  Nick scratched at the paper place mat where it was cold and soggy from his glass. Phoebe stared, dazed, at her son and tried to swallow, but her dry throat was tight and wouldn’t let her.

  Nick waited.

  “We have nothing,” she said, halting. “We have to be out of our place, Nick. You don’t have a job?” She pushed her chair back and stood and it fell. Phoebe weaved through busboys and hostesses toward the bathroom inside the restaurant. A cloud drifted away from the sun, and its glare in the boy’s eyes was blinding. His vulnerability was startling. Without sunscreen, he’d burn. Without a watchful eye and precise cuts, he’d choke on his food. Wasps would sting him, send him into shock.

  Nick stood up, opened a large green umbrella over the table, moved Jackson from the glare and into the shade. They sat alone in the stillness. Crayons and ice water. Nick was numb. The two of them alone, just a father and son. Phoebe reappeared. She was back. Face clean and clear, no evidence that she’d been crying. No sign of distress. She was remarkable that way. She could pull her hair back in a ponytail, splash water on her face, adjust her bra or top, and like that, she was poised, sharp and stunning.