The Fix

by Kristin Rouse

  Amanda arrived while I was gone, but Anja is doing a great job ignoring her while Juliana hooks her into the long row of buttons down the back of her ivory gown. She spies me in the long mirror and gives me a little wave. Juliana peeks over her shoulder, grins broadly, and then twirls Anja around with a flourish.

  Years from now, when I think of Anja’s wedding day, I’ll remember how she giggled when her new sister-in-law spun her, and how somehow that made her that much more of gorgeous bride. Then she looks at me, imploring, her head tilted and shoulders tensed until I step forward, hold out my hands, and beam at her. Her dress is that sort of crinkly, sheer-over-solid material that looks like it’ll never wrinkle, which is good, because every one of her eighty-odd guests is going to want to hug her as much as I do.

  “You’ve never looked more gorgeous, kid,” I tell her, and yeah, my voice is a little scratchy with emotion. “Mattias is gonna lose it when he sees you.”

  She’s leaning against me like a buoy for a long while, and I keep my arms firmly around her until she stops trembling. I pull away to make sure I didn’t muss her hair. The last of her tension seems to unwind before my very eyes.

  “You’re still missing something,” Juliana says, tugging her away and coaxing her to sit so she can clip the short bunch of mesh that is her veil over her eyes. That’s when I finally get a good look at Juliana. She’s in the same burgundy, floor-length dress that Amanda, scowling at us from the corner, wears. But on Juliana, the material hugs her curves and falls daintily while Amanda looks uncomfortable and even mussed. The color is perfect with Juliana’s dark skin. Unlike Anja’s, up in curls at the back of her head, Juliana’s long hair falls in waves down the right side of her neck, held in place with a matching ribbon. Juliana swipes it down her shoulders and back with her fingers when she straightens from fitting Anja’s veil; the brown tresses brush the neckline of her strapless dress in a satiny wave I can’t help but be mesmerized by. Anja is every inch the blushing, vibrant bride who’ll take everyone’s breath away as soon as she walks down the aisle. But I can’t help but feel as if I’m going to end up being the lucky bastard who’s going to have the prettiest girl in the room on my arm. I try to memorize the dimpled smile she and Anja share in the mirror, but before I can, the wedding coordinator bustles up the stairs and tells us everyone’s arrived and seated. Amanda skulks off down the stairs after the woman, but Juliana links arms with Anja and I fall in step on her other side. Anja clings to both of us for relief, and, together, Juliana and I get her to the threshold.

  Anja’s father isn’t escorting her down the aisle. Despite her iron grasp on our arms, Juliana and I still have to be at the head of the procession. As the music is piped in over the speakers and the coordinator gets us in our spot, Juliana slips her arm in the crook of my elbow and jabs me playfully in the side.

  “You clean up pretty nice,” she says to me. “I like this look better than the coffee-stained hoodie you’ve been sporting all day.”

  “Thanks.” I keep the clenching of my gut in check by focusing on the music as we start down the aisle. I’m remarkably composed, and it’s possible she doesn’t notice just how nervous she makes me. She cracks a joke through her smile-exposed teeth as we stride along and the photographer snaps our picture. It’s nearly impossible not to laugh out loud—it’s not every day I find someone who detests Pachelbel’s Canon as much as I do.

  I keep quiet because I have to, of course. A minute later, Lukas brings down a faux-faced beaming Amanda.

  And then, when the music changes, Anja steals the show.

  ***

  Juliana is back on my arm the moment Mattias and Anja say “I do” and march triumphantly back down the aisle. I know that it was supposed to be this way for the ceremony, but for all this time at the reception, too? And yet here she is, cracking jokes and snarking in my ear.

  After our part of the pictures are taken care of, we’re allowed into the reception area by the wedding consultant, Anja having declined a formal announcement for the wedding party lest Amanda do something catty. It’s not a sit-down dinner reception, so Juliana isn’t even obligated to be near me. Yet everywhere I turn, she’s there. She insists we get appetizers from one of the stacked high tables. And then, in a move that sets my stomach roiling, she declares it’s high time to get drunk already, and forces me with her to the bar.

  It’s cash-only, on account of Anja, something Juliana wrinkles her nose at.

  “First round’s on me?” she offers.

  I shake my head, my skin already pebbling from nerves. “I’ve got to drive.”

  “We won’t be going anywhere for hours. First one’s on me, come on….”

  Lukas dives in at the exact right moment. I swear, I could kiss him. “You’re buying drinks, sis, you can buy for me. I’ll drink Ez’s share.”

  The knowing wink he gives me behind Juliana’s shoulder communicates two things: first, that Anja must have asked him to keep an eye on me around the booze, since she’d be too busy glad-handing her guests to do it herself. Second—and I couldn’t tell you why it disconcerts me—that Juliana clearly has no idea I’m in recovery. I’ve known her two days, and I can already tell for certain she’s not the sort who’d be insensitive enough to shove a drink in an alcoholic’s hand. Juliana orders them two dirty martinis with extra olives. I ask for a glass of straight soda water to soothe the bartender and watch as Juliana convinces her brother to join her in a shot. Lukas shoots me another contrite look, but gladly accepts the shot of whiskey the bartender sets in front of them. I try not to envy the burn in their throats as the alcohol works its way down, but the longing is there. It’s as niggling now as it was six months ago. I’ve got to get the hell away from this bar.

  I want to cry in relief when the DJ announces the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Mattias Almeida. It’s impossible to not be drawn in by the blissful looks on Mattias’s and Anja’s faces. They opt to make the rounds of their guests before the dancing starts, which gives me just enough time to sneak downstairs for a cigarette. I have to suck down two before my hands stop shaking and the overwhelming craving that’d crested over me abates.

  “You’re missing their first dance!” a voice calls out. Juliana slips out the side door, having stolen Lukas’s tuxedo jacket.

  All the same, she bounces on her heels as a gust of frigid air blows down the long corridor that makes up 16th Street Mall.

  “They’re done saying hello to everyone already?” I ask, agape.

  Her face contorts, like she’s biting something nasty. “Her parents requested they get things moving,” she says. “It sounds like they have somewhere else to be. What the fuck is with them?”

  “They’ve been this way forever,” I say, and my heart aches for Anja. Mac would never have pulled something so shitty. “Whatever you might think it has to do with your family, I can promise you it doesn’t. Anja never stood a chance of being their favorite. And over the last few years….”

  Juliana nods, like she knows what I’m going to say. Of course she knows all about it.

  “Still, it’s adorable that Mat can’t dance, so stub out your cancer stick and come up. It’s a long song. And you realize it’s your duty to dance with me, right?” She says the last part with that strange sort of wink of hers. It’s more like she’s batting her eyelashes at me. It makes me feel something significant and dangerous.

  “I can almost guarantee you that Mattias looks like a pro-ballroom dancer in comparison to me,” I say as we board the elevator.

  “Ah, but he’s dancing with a white girl,” she says with a smirk. “You’ll be dancing with a Brazilian girl with amazing rhythm. Me and my hips can make anyone look good.” Her hips are pretty amazing.

  We make it back upstairs in time to see Mattias try and fail to dip Anja, though at least he doesn’t drop her. They kiss passionately to much fanfare, and the DJ puts on something more up-tempo. She pulls me toward the dance floor, her hips already swaying with the beat.

  “Ser
iously, I’ll step on your toes and scuff your shoes. Or tear your dress. Or….”

  She spins in place, her hair billowing out like the hem of her dress. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Juliana—”

  “Ezra,” she teases back.

  It’s everything I can do then and there to not kiss her senseless.

  “I just really—” I begin, but she presses her fingers to my lips and winks at me, again with that hybrid wink/bat thing.

  “Stop thinking so much,” she says, her voice sultry. “It’s not a competition. It’s your best friend’s wedding. And I promise, you have an incredible dance partner who’s been deprived of a dance floor for way too long. Just dance with me, Ezra.”

  Thirty seconds into the song, I realize what it is about her that I find so terrifying about Juliana. The girl is like a cigarette: she’s addictive, and for me, that’s dangerous.

  ***

  The cat growls at me when I get home. I roll my eyes at her and toe off the rented tux shoes that were so not made for all the dancing I’d just done—but I find it almost impossible to be too irritated at her.

  What no one told me about being in a wedding is that your evening does not end when the DJ plays the bride and groom off to Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On”—it’s only just begun. Even with the paid cleaning crew, there were still wedding presents to collect and pile in the back of Mama A’s car, centerpieces and favors left on the high-top tables, flowers that needed to be handled carefully so they’d last a few extra days, and an alarming amount of stuff in both the bride’s and groom’s suites that couldn’t be left behind. With Amanda disappearing around the time her parents did, it fell to me, Mama A, Lukas, and Juliana. I actually took the emergency stairs one trip just to keep the momentum up without waiting for the elevator. Even before that, though, I was exhausted—Juliana really is an incredible dancer. And she’s impossible to say no to.

  When I finally was sent off by Mama A with copious kisses to the cheeks and a promise to come by for dinner even with Anja and Mattias off on their honeymoon, I navigated the confusing downtown streets to dodge construction traffic on the highway. Now, the cat’s hissing is about the last thing I wanted to deal with, but at least my apartment is intact. We have something of an understanding, the cat and I—I keep her in kibble, water, and fresh litter, and she doesn’t tear up all of my shit. I’ve never been a cat person. If not for my loyalty to Mac, I wouldn’t have an animal at all.

  For the second time tonight, I find myself craving a stiff drink. It’s the exhaustion. I always kicked back after a long day with a scotch and soda or a microbrew, and six months sober does little to take the edge off that habit. I take the little scraps of aluminum that are my recovery chips out of their place folded into my wallet and rub them between my thumb and forefingers. The oldest two—my 24-hour and one month—are already a little smoothed out for how often I’ve done this while my most recent, an azure blue, is still shiny and new. A little calmer, I shirk off the dress shirt and slacks and change into a pair of sweatpants before hunting around in my cupboards for something that’ll do as an ashtray. I crack the balcony door and light up. The nicotine surging through me levels my head. I search my discarded slacks for my cell phone and come up with nothing. It must have fallen out in my car, but it’s far too cold to go out and fetch it.

  Something mindless on Netflix is lulling me into a half-sleep when there’s a knock at my front door. I haven’t had the occasion to have late night guests since I quit drinking. It’s not entirely uncommon for some guest of one of my neighbors to knock on my door by accident because of how terribly our building numbers are marked. I wait for a beat to see if whoever it is will leave on their own, but they knock again.

  Even through a peephole, Juliana has the same sort of effect on me that I’ve been trying to ignore all evening. Of all the possible late-night guests I could have, she’s the sort I should be most wary of. That doesn’t stop me from opening the door for her.

  “Forget something?” she says, a wide smile on her pretty face as she holds up my cell phone. Clearly, my car was not where I’d dropped it.

  “Oh, damn… Thanks,” I say, and take it from her. The air nipping at my nose is bitingly cold, and I can’t help but notice she’s still only wearing the tux jacket she stole from Lukas.

  She explains before I get a chance to invite her in out of the cold. “Mama found it on top of one of the bins of stuff from the bridal suite and Luk realized it was yours. I was more sober to drive it over, so he gave me your address.”

  “This is a life-saver,” I say. “About the last thing I’ve got extra cash for these days is a new phone.”

  “I was also sent with a message about laundry. Specifically—Mama wants to know if you’re coming Wednesday to do yours.”

  I haven’t trusted the laundry in my building since one of the dryers destroyed a set of my sheets last year. I’d been a pretty steady patron of a laundromat nearby that has functional machines and is kept pretty clean. Its initial draw had been its proximity to my favorite microbrewery, and I quickly adopted a habit of drinking myself stupid during the spin cycle. After I’d sobered up, Anja had offered up Mama A’s house on Wednesdays, one of my days off, to avoid the temptation.

  “Ah, yeah, I figured I would. Um, is that a problem for her because I can—”

  “Oh, no, she’ll be thrilled. It does mean she’s going to conscript you to take me to the airport that afternoon, though.”

  Of course Juliana would be staying with her mother while she’s in town, but part of the appeal of using Mama A’s washer in the middle of the day is the solitude of it. And after an evening of trying to deny I’d want something more if Juliana offered it, I’d resigned myself over the past hour since I left her that it was just tonight. I only had to cope with one night of burgeoning feelings and wondering if I was deluding myself that maybe she was flirting with me, and then that’d be it. She’d be back in Brazil. I’d be back to living day-to-day without a drink. There wasn’t ever going to be anything other than that. Spending another day with her wasn’t in the cards.

  “I have to get back to Sao Paolo sooner than Mama was expecting, so she didn’t take Wednesday off. I know DIA is far and annoying, so you can totally say no,” she says, almost like she can sense my reluctance. “I’ll take an Uber or a shuttle or something and you can just tell Mama you took me.”

  “No,” I say a little too quickly. “I don’t mind. What time?”

  “Really, Ezra, I can….”

  “I usually come over around ten. I’ll be happy to, Juliana.” What the hell am I saying?

  She smiles, and it slays me. Utterly, utterly slays me. How is her makeup still perfect? I sweated like a pig while she sashayed around me. How is her hair not a frizzy mess? How the hell is it possible she still smells so damn good?

  “Anja was exactly right about you,” she says, her smile growing wider. “You’re incredible. I’ll fill your gas tank for the trouble, all right?”

  I smile back and hope I’m not blushing or anything that would mark me as an idiot. “I’d be happier with a pot of that Brazilian coffee.”

  Another wink/bat of her eyelashes. If she were a different sort of girl, I might suppose this was more flirting. But flirting seems so ridiculous—girls as incredible as her do not flirt with guys like me.

  “Ready and waiting for you. See you then.”

  I never get the chance to ask her inside to warm up. She waves, turns toe, and strides with purpose and grace down the stairs. Four-inch heels and almost a foot of snow can’t keep her from practically floating. How the hell she does that, I haven’t a clue. But she has me watching her all the way to the parking lot, where she slides behind the wheel of Mama A’s car and, I swear, winks at me again before she drives away.

  I’m deluding myself. I’m overly tired and I’m seeing things. But more importantly, I’m about to spend another day with her that I didn’t think I’d get. And that is thrilling.

>   CHAPTER THREE

  Once, and only once, I tried going back to my old laundromat after I sobered up. I made it through the better part of the wash cycle, but I picked a dud dryer with a burned-out heater for a batch of my work uniforms and ended up there for way longer than I should have been. The temptation of Comrade Brewery, one of my old haunts, was too much for my two-month sobriety and I ended up ditching my stuff, jogging home, and calling Anja to beg her or Mattias to pick my clothes up for me. They both had to sit with me for hours afterwards so I wouldn’t do something stupid. Anja made me promise not to go anywhere near there again. Not my finest moment. Then again, this entire year has been one long series of “not Ezra Mackenzie’s finest moments.”

  That’s how Mama A’s came about. Being a kindergarten teacher, Anja was already out of school for the summer and could let me in and hang out with me. It was those summer afternoons, with her keeping me distracted from the thought of open liquor bottles in a strange house, that our friendship rekindled into something functional and healthy. From the time we were dumbass teenagers, we used to drink together to glorious excess—we honestly didn’t know what to do around one another unless there were drinks in our hands. Sober, we had to find new things to do with our hands, things to say that didn’t spark one of us to want a drink. We had to figure out how to be friends again. Thankfully, so thankfully, we figured it out. I know I’d never be at six months clean without her.

  After she went back to school, I kept up doing laundry there because I knew Mama A didn’t keep liquor in the house day-to-day. It’s safe ground to read, to think, to stew sometimes about what a mess my life feels like most days even though I’m arguably better now than I was this time last year. But I’ll be honest—if Mama A did keep liquor in the house, I’m not sure I could trust myself alone there and not go bottle hunting.

  I think that’s why this infatuation with Juliana feels like such a bad thing. Alcoholics in recovery are not fun to be around. The word ‘prick’ comes to mind. I have my moments where I honestly wonder how anyone can be around me for any period of time, long or short. My job as a massage therapist helps me compartmentalize—it helps to focus on something external, something I can manipulate and control, even if it is just a housewife’s tight shoulder muscles. Sometimes I’m mid-session when a craving hits, and have to pretend that I don’t hate my client for taking up my time when I could be out getting absolutely hammered. This actually helps, too—depending on how long my session might be scheduled for, the craving might pass by the time I’m wrapping up and itching to call Anja and grab my chips and a cigarette. Sometimes, on really bad days, it gets stronger.