by Maggie Estep
“Ruby here. Mark, I need a lesson badly. Please call.” I click the phone off and stare out the window, trying not to think.
Mark Baxter
20 / Raving Beauties
Unfortunately I’ve discovered that my interest in cheese has waned. My mother was raised in France and, accordingly, had pronounced tastes in cheeses. Tastes she passed on to me. Of course, my mother, Isabelle, is unwell and living in an institution now. It was perhaps these very tastes that drove her mad. Or rather, the difficulty of having developed keen tastes at a young age and then, later in life, being deprived of the things she’d learned to crave. Her parents were killed when she was seventeen. She married at eighteen, had me at nineteen, then was abandoned by my father. She was a beautiful, intelligent woman but she didn’t know how to hack through the world’s brutalities. She found a way to afford piano lessons for me and pressured me to work hard the moment she realized I had potential. Driving me to play Carnegie Hall—an event I feared might never happen—took the last of her inner resources. By the time I was twelve there wasn’t much left of her. She managed to show up for her job at the glove counter at Bergdorf’s, but she almost never spoke and streaks of white appeared in her wheat-colored hair. She was locked away when I was fourteen, and my godmother Dot raised me for the next four years. My mother remains under lock and key to this day. She has deteriorated but is still in many ways beautiful. It is for her that I work as I do. And I carry her refined tastes inside me. But now I find they are changing. Though I have a slab of perfectly ripe Brie here in my practice room, I’m finding it difficult to negotiate. I am nearly crippled with hunger, after working all day on the JSB partita. I have been relentless in my quest, and all this time the cheese has been ripening.
I walk over to where the plate of cheese is sitting, on a small table to the left of the piano. I pick up the plate and hold it to my nose. The odor is repellent.
I sit down cross-legged on the floor and rest my head in my hands. The head is very heavy right now despite being light from hunger. I have not heard from Wanda since walking out her door. The way she protested my abrupt departure, I thought surely she would call or, in her inimitable fashion, worm her way through Juilliard security and find her way to my practice room. Each time I’ve left the room to urinate or get coffee, I’ve expected to find her here upon my return. But she is not here. Not physically. Though apparently her absurd preferences have infected me. Wanda is a vegan and the very idea of cheese is appalling to her.
A sudden noise startles me. I lift my heavy head, crane my neck to the little window in the door and see a face. Though I will it to be Wanda’s, it is not. It is the cellist. Whatever her name is. The willowy thing who looks at me with lust in her eyes. I stare up at her. She mouths something, probably a request to be let in. I slowly stand up and approach the door. The tiny window frames her face. I stare at it long moments before at last unlocking the door and opening it.
“Yes?” I say, letting her know my displeasure at the interruption.
“You’ve been in here all day,” the blond woman says. “You must eat, Mark.” I now see that she’s proffering some sort of sandwich.
“Is that egg salad?” I demand.
“It is not. I’m aware of your loathing for eggs.”
This startles me. I barely remember ever conversing with this woman. How would she know of my loathing for eggs?
“Grilled portabello mushrooms,” the girl says. “I am a vegetarian and can’t say I encourage the consumption of meat and dairy products.”
Another one. My mother wouldn’t approve. Such a limited palate these vegetarians have.
“Don’t tell me, you do yoga too, don’t you?”
“Don’t be snide, Mark. You could benefit from such a thing. Look at you,” she says, motioning at my body. “You’re hunched and slumped and no doubt aching all over.”
“I most certainly am not,” I protest.
“I know you’ve forgotten my name. It’s Julia. I am a cellist.”
“I know.”
“You know my name?”
“No no, the cello,” I say irritably.
“Ah,” she says.
I have to admit she is what most people would consider beautiful: slender, blond, ethereal, with eyes that actually show some intelligence. But I want my Wanda.
“What is it you need, Julia? I was working.”
“It’s what you need. You need to come out of that room at once. I am taking you outside and you will eat this sandwich.”
The girl has audacity. She now grabs my arm and forcibly pulls me out of my room.
“I must lock,” I say, motioning at my room’s door.
“You have no need to lock. No one wants to go in there, they all think you’re insane, Mark.”
These events are taking a decidedly unpleasant turn. But the demented cellist has my arm in a viselike grip and is pulling me toward the elevators and, for some reason, I am letting her.
A few moments later, after startled looks from some of our fellow students, Julia has steered me outside and over to the cement steps facing the Juilliard entrance. There are smokers everywhere, and though I loathe smoke, it reminds me of Wanda so I say nothing.
Julia has unwrapped the sandwich from its wax paper and is shoving it toward my mouth. I grip her hand, extract the sandwich from it, and halt her unceremonious effort at feeding me.
“I can eat by myself, thank you,” I say curtly.
She smiles at me, and this surprises me. Perhaps I’ve never seen her smile before. There’s something in this smile, something that piques my interest.
I bite into the sandwich and find it to be rather good. I chew slowly. Julia’s eyes are on me. As if much is riding on my approval of the sandwich.
“It’s quite edible,” I tell her before taking another bite.
Her smile becomes a gleeful grin. “Of course it is. I have remarkable tastes. You would know this if you ever gave me the time of day.”
The girl really has some fight in her, perhaps due to my previous wholehearted dismissal of her. Whatever the cause, her sudden strong attentions are not displeasing.
I eat the entire sandwich as Julia strikes up a conversation with a nearby smoker, a nervous Asian man with terrible acne scars who, I believe, is a violinist. I see the effect Julia’s attentions are having on him and fervently hope they’ll never do such a thing to me. The man is putty.
When I’ve dispatched every last crumb of the sandwich, I tell Julia I must go back to my room.
“Your room can wait, there is life to be lived out here, Mark Baxter,” she says, making a sweeping gesture that takes in the blue of the sky. I notice that this blue is the same as her not unlovely eyes.
“Be that as it may, I am returning.”
“When will I see you again?” she brashly demands.
“I suppose there will be chance encounters in the halls of this fine institution,” I say, standing.
“That’s not acceptable,” Julia says.
“You, fair miss, are out of control,” I scold her.
“Entirely, yes. That’s part of my charm.”
“I will see you around,” I say firmly, and then walk back to the revolving doors.
I flick my identification through the security scanner and hurry ahead to the elevators before that nuisance of a woman can catch up to me. In moments I am back at my room. I go in, lock the door, and quickly forage for something to put up over the little window to the hallway so Julia can’t look in as I work. I tape a copy of a brusque Shostakovich piece I’ve been toying with up over the window. That ought to deter her.
As I turn back to the piano I catch sight of the ghastly Brie. I put it in the trash and cover it with tissues from the little tissue dispenser I recently purchased. I am about to turn my attention back o the piano when I think to check my phone for messages from Wanda.
The phone’s screen informs me that I do indeed have a new message. With eager fingers I enter my code and the m
essage is played for me. Alas, it is Her Royal Stubby Fingeredness, grown suddenly concerned about our next lesson. She sounds breathless and worried and is ranting about needing a lesson. She is a likable wench. Perhaps I’d do well to distract myself from Wanda by pursuing her—though it would doubtless be demoralizing. Eccentric and thirty-three, Wench is certainly set in her ways and would most likely require baroque methods of courtship that I probably don’t have the strength for.
All the same, I call her back. The phone rings twice and a man answers.
“Who is this?” I demand, unsettled by the male voice. The Wench told me of the demise of her live-in boyfriend. Surely she couldn’t have moved a new one in already.
“This is Oliver,” the voice says evenly. “Who’s this?”
“This is Mark Baxter. I am returning Ruby’s call.”
“She’s not here. She’ll probably be home soon, though.”
“Who are you?” My voice sounds more suspicious and icy than I intended.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Are you Ruby’s boyfriend?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Her piano teacher.”
“And you want to get down her pants?”
“Certainly not,” I say vehemently, “I’m merely concerned about her. She needs to practice.”
“Uh,” the man named Oliver grunts at me. I do not like this man.
“Please tell her I returned her call,” I say, then click off, very disheartened.
I briefly toy with the idea of calling Wanda, but suddenly I’m struck with the thought that this is all the handiwork of the gods. The perverse gods have taken my Wanda from me and have made some man answer the Wench’s phone. The perverse gods are seeing to it that I give all my attention to JSB and the business of winning this competition and paving the way for myself. My mother has put them up to it. I look up to the scarred drop ceiling of my room, but there are no gods there. I put my hands on the instrument and play.
Ruby Murphy
21 / A Beautiful Night
The train pulls into the Stillwell Avenue stop and I slowly get up and walk out onto the platform. My body hurts and I’m tired and confused, but all the same, the sight of my beloved Coney makes me feel better.
The sun is slipping from the sky like a large red ball some kid forgot to take home. All along Surf Avenue the Russians have their little junk stores open, crap laid out on blankets in front. Anytime anyone tries to buy anything, though, these cantankerous keepers of mostly useless and unwanted items inevitably name some astronomical price—or simply refuse to speak to their would-be customers.
I veer right on Stillwell, away from the din and chaos and over to the relative sanctity of my building. I slowly climb the stairs and find Ramirez standing in the hallway, wearing only a pair of jockey shorts, holding a fly swatter and looking extremely distressed.
“What’s up?” I motion at the fly swatter and avert my eyes from the stained jockey shorts.
“Flying cockroaches,” Ramirez says.
“What?”
“Flying cockroaches,” he scowls, “motherfuckers.”
“Aren’t flying cockroaches indigenous to like South America or something? I don’t think they can survive in Brooklyn.”
At which my neighbor lets off a stream of Spanish expletives and cranes his neck to look up at the hallway ceiling where, he’s convinced, flying cockroaches are hiding.
“I hate to distract you, but how’s Elsie?”
This startles Ramirez back to reality and he frowns and shakes his head. “My poor baby,” he says sadly, “antibiotics is helping but she still got pain.” He shrugs then asks me to come inside his place a moment.
I follow him into his bright yellow kitchen. On the table sits a thick sheaf of papers, what look like printouts of Internet articles. Ramirez picks these up and waves them in my face.
“My baby gonna have a lot to deal with,” he says. “See this.” He points at one of the sheets of paper, evidently a first-person testimonial from a girl whose botched implants gave her a life-threatening infection. “My niece got me all this off the computer.”
Though I’m redolent of horse manure, and Stinky, who’s heard my voice through the door, is loudly insisting that I get my butt home, I sit down with Ramirez and read through the botched implant stories. Grim tales of scarred and putrefied flesh, mood swings, headaches, hideous nipple discharge, and that’s not the worst of it.
Ramirez is very worked up, which is probably part of what’s got him thinking we’ve got an infestation of flying cockroaches. Suddenly, he looks at me, as if he’s really seeing me for the first time tonight.
“How come you so dirty, girl?”
“I was working. At the track.”
“What’s up with that?”
“Oh, it’s kind of incredible. Someone actually died out there. And it’s possible that Ariel’s boyfriend had something to do with it. There’s even a chance someone is killing horses for the insurance money. And the boyfriend maybe had something to do with that too.”
“Died?” Ramirez’s eyes nearly pop out of his head.
“Yeah. Heart attack. Supposedly, anyway. Speed overdose is what I hear.”
“Little girl, I don’t like this. You stop this shit now,” he says, banging the kitchen table for emphasis.
I try to explain that it’s not as bad as it sounds, which my neighbor does not believe for a minute. He gives me a severe tongue-lashing. I hang my head and act contrite. At least I’ve distracted him from the psychosomatic flying cockroaches.
Changing the subject, I tell him I’m about to go on a date. The first I’ve been on in a while. But this doesn’t seem to please him either.
“What about your friend? Oliver?”
“He’s my friend. But we don’t have sex. Haven’t in years.”
“That’s a shame, Ruby.”
I agree that it is a shame. But it is what it is.
I stand up, lean over and kiss Ramirez on the cheek and bid him a good evening. I cross the hall, knock to alert Oliver that I’m home, and then let myself in. Stinky hurls his entire body at my legs.
I call out Oliver’s name but only the cats respond, chanting in famished unison. As both beasts weave between my legs, I hunt through the fridge and discover I’m out of cat meat. I forage in the cupboards, locating two cans of Pet Guard—one of the only Jane-sanctioned brands of canned cat food. Pet Guard doesn’t use lugubrious by-products or preservatives, which is something I would not have thought about a mere two years ago. Since then, Jane started helping her yoga guru—an avowed cat fanatic—do research on all the hideous things that can fall under the categorization of by-product. Anything from diseased animal parts to fecal matter.
Stinky head-butts my leg. An annoying yet endearing habit that usually makes me feel cozy, but now for some reason gives me a wave of extreme melancholy. I feel like a fucking cat lady. I am going to die alone, serving cats and babbling at myself as I roll around in balls of cat fur. I’ll store plastic bags in a knot at the side of the sink because you never know when you might suddenly need 573 plastic bags.
Gloom presses at my temples. I stand frozen for a few seconds until Stinky’s loud wails force me to continue putting food in the dishes.
As the cats dig into their dinner I lower myself into the kitchen chair. I put my face on the table and close my eyes. There’s no reason to feel this low. I have Oliver to keep me company. I have three jobs. Two cats. I’m solvent. But nothing helps. I think about my dead father. I miss him.
Tears begin to slide over my cheeks and onto the table surface. I think about everyone I know who has died or been wounded. I think about my ex-boyfriend Sam who moved out in the not so distant past. I usually don’t let myself think about him. But now I get a sudden image of the last time we fucked. Me on my stomach. Him yanking down my favorite pink thong. Who knew it would be the last time?
I start to get angry. Like it just happened. I spend a fe
w moments envisioning Sam having really bad sex with dim-witted girls and I start to feel better.
I get up from the kitchen table, take my clothes off, get in the shower, and scrub myself thoroughly. My off-white washcloth turns brown.
I dry off, lotion myself, and go stare at my closet. I want to look sexy but I don’t feel like having an episode with my clothes so I just put on black cotton pants, a tight soft black sweater, and red shoes.
I go back into the living room and sit at the piano, launching into the Handel piece. I get lost in the music, and the next thing I know Oliver is fumbling with the locks as he lets himself in.
“I love Coney Island,” he announces, coming through the door.
I look up and see that he’s nearly naked. Wearing just a pair of boxer shorts, sneakers, and socks. In his hand are the rest of his clothes, balled up. His torso is bare, revealing the protruding feeding tube.
“What, have you been running naked in the street?” I ask, indignant.
I endeavor to maintain a low profile in the neighborhood. My beautiful emaciated friend parading around mostly naked isn’t going to do much to further that particular cause.
“I went running,” he says. “Had to do something to stop feeling so sick. I got overheated so I took a few things off.”
“Oh,” I say, not wanting to ask if it’s a good idea that he exert himself like that.
And clearly it wasn’t a good idea. Oliver is slightly gray and he barely makes it to the couch before collapsing. “Maybe I pushed a little too hard,” he says.
I put my hand to his clammy forehead. “Oliver, could you please take care of yourself?” I say severely.
“Hush,” he says, laying back on the couch and closing his eyes, “no reprimands.”
Once his breathing gets even and his coloring improves, I tell him about my day.
“People usually don’t kill racehorses for insurance money,” he says. “That’s a thing that happens with show jumpers and stuff. Usually not racehorses.”