Sasha climbs out on the fire escape a second later. "What are you doing?" she asks.
"Don't know," you say. "Fresh air." You wonder how long you can go on speaking in two-word sentences. "Nice day."
Across East Seventh Street, two old ladies have folded bath towels on their windowsills and are resting their elbows on them while they peer down at the street below. "Look there," you say, pointing. "Two spies."
"It makes me nervous, Bobby," Sasha says. "You out here." She's the only one who gets to call you that; you were Bobby until you were ten, but according to your pop it's a girl's name after that.
"How come?" you say. "Third floor. Broken arm. Or leg. Worst case."
"Please come in."
"Relax, Sash." You park yourself on the grille steps leading up to the fourth-floor windows.
"Party migrate out here?" Drew origamis himself through the living room window onto the fire escape and leans over the railing to look down at the street. From inside, you hear Lizzie answer the phone—"Hi, Mom!"—trying to fluff the hash out of her voice. Her parents are visiting from Texas, which means that Bix, who's black, is spending his nights in the electrical engineering lab where he's doing his PhD research. Lizzie's parents aren't even staying with her—they're at a hotel. But if Lizzie is sleeping with a black man in the same city where her parents are, they will just know.
Lizzie pokes her torso out the window. She's wearing a tiny blue skirt and tan patent leather boots that go up higher than her knees. To herself, she's already a costume designer.
"How's the bigot?" you ask, realizing with chagrin that the sentence has three words.
Lizzie turns to you, startled. "Are you referring to my mother?"
"Not me."
"You can't talk that way in my apartment, Rob," she says, using the Calm Voice they've all been using since you got back, a voice that leaves you no choice but to see how hard you have to push before it cracks.
"I'm not." You indicate the fire escape.
"Or on my fire escape."
"Not yours," you correct her. "Bix's too. Actually, no. The city's."
"Fuck you, Rob," Lizzie says.
"You too," you say, grinning with satisfaction at the sight of real anger on a human face. It's been a while.
"Calm down," Sasha tells Lizzie.
"Excuse me? I should calm down?" Lizzie says. "He's being a total asshole. Ever since he got back."
"He's been back two weeks," Sasha says. "That's not very long."
"I love how they talk about me like I'm not here," you observe to Drew. "Do they think I'm dead?"
"They think you're stoned."
"They're correct."
"Me too." Drew climbs the fire escape until he's a few steps above you and perches there. He takes a long breath, savoring it, and you take one too. In Wisconsin, Drew has shot an elk with a bow and arrow, skinned it, cut off the meat into sections, and carried it home in a backpack, wearing snowshoes. Or maybe he was kidding. He and his brothers built a log cabin with their bare hands. He grew up next to a lake, and every morning, even in winter, Drew swam there. Now he swims in the NYU pool, but the chlorine hurts his eyes and it's not the same, he says, with a ceiling over you. Still, he swims there a lot, especially when he's troubled or stressed or in a fight with Sasha. "You must've grown up swimming," he said when he first heard you were from Florida, and you said, Of course. But the truth is you've never liked the water—something only Sasha knows about you.
You lurch from the steps to the other end of the fire escape platform, where a window looks into the little alcove where Bix's computer lives. Bix is in front of it, dreadlocks thick as cigars, typing messages to other graduate students that they'll read on their computers, and reading messages they send back. According to Bix, this computer-message-sending is going to be huge—bigger than the telephone. He's big on predicting the future, and you haven't really challenged him—maybe because he's older, maybe because he's black.
Bix jumps at the sight of you looming outside his window in your baggy jeans and football jersey, which you've taken to wearing again, for some reason. "Shit, Rob," he says, "what are you doing out there?"
"Watching you."
"You've got Lizzie all stressed out."
"I'm sorry."
"So get in here and tell her that."
You climb in through Bix's window. There's a Last Judgment poster hanging right over his desk, from the Albi Cathedral. You remember it from your Intro to Art History class last year, a class you loved so much you added art history to your business major. You wonder if Bix is religious.
In the living room Sasha and Lizzie are sitting on the futon couch, looking grim. Drew is still out on the fire escape. "I'm sorry," you tell Lizzie.
"It's okay," she says, and you know you should leave it there—it's fine, leave it alone, but some crazy engine inside you won't let you stop: "I'm sorry your mom is a bigot. I'm sorry Bix has to have a girlfriend from Texas. I'm sorry I'm an asshole. I'm sorry I make you nervous because I tried to kill myself. I'm sorry to get in the way of your nice afternoon..." Your throat tightens up and your eyes get wet as you watch their faces go from stony to sad, and it's all kind of moving and sweet except that you're not completely there—a part of you is a few feet away, or above, thinking, Good, they'll forgive you, they won't desert you, and the question is, which one is really "you," the one saying and doing whatever it is, or the one watching?
You leave Bix and Lizzie's with Sasha and Drew and head west, toward Washington Square. The cold spasms in the scars on your wrists. Sasha and Drew are a braid of elbows and shoulders and pockets, which presumably keeps them warmer than you. When you were back in Tampa, recovering, they took a Greyhound to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration and stayed up all night and watched the sun rise over the Mall, at which point (they both say) they felt the world start to change right under their feet. You snickered when Sasha told you this, but ever since, you find yourself watching strangers' faces on the street and wondering if they feel it too; a change having to do with Bill Clinton or something even bigger that's everywhere—in the air, underground—obvious to everyone but you.
At Washington Square you and Sasha say goodbye to Drew, who peels off to take a swim and wash the hash from his head. Sasha's wearing her backpack, heading for the library.
"Thank God," you say. "He's gone." You can't seem to stop talking in two-word sentences now, even though you'd like to.
"Nice," Sasha remarks.
"I'm kidding. He's great."
"I know."
Your high is wearing off, leaving a box of lint where your head should be. Getting high is new for you—your not getting high was the whole reason Sasha picked you out the first day of classes last year, in Washington Square. Blocking your sun with her henna-red hair, smart, quick eyes looking at you from the side rather than head-on. "I'm in need of a fake boyfriend," she said. "Are you up for it?"
"How about your real one?" you said.
She sat down beside you and laid things out: in high school, back in L.A., she'd run away with the drummer for a band you'd never heard of, left the country and traveled alone in Europe and Asia—never even graduated. Now, a freshman, she was almost twenty-one. Her stepfather had pulled every string to get her in here. Last week he'd told her he was hiring a detective to make sure she "toed the line" on her own in New York. "Someone could be watching me right now," she said, looking across the square, crowded with kids who all seemed to know each other. "I feel like someone is."
"Should I put my arm around you?"
"Please."
You've heard somewhere that the act of smiling makes people feel happier; putting your arm around Sasha made you want to protect her. "Why me?" you asked. "Out of curiosity."
"You're cute," she said. "Plus, you don't look druggy."
"I'm a football player," you said. "Was."
You and Sasha had books to buy; you bought them together. You visited her dorm, where you caught Lizzie, her ro
ommate, mugging approval when your back was turned. At five thirty you were both loading your cafeteria trays, you going heavy on the spinach because everyone says football muscle turns to Jell-O when you stop playing. You both got your library cards, went back to your dorms, then met at the Apple for drinks at eight o'clock. It was packed with students. Sasha kept glancing around, and you figured she was thinking about the detective, so you put your arm around her and kissed the side of her face and her hair, which had a nice burned smell, the not-realness of it all relaxing you in a way you'd never managed to be with girls at home. At which point Sasha explained Step Two: each of you had to tell the other something that would make it impossible for you ever to really go out.
"Have you done this before?" you asked, incredulous.
She'd drunk two white wines (which you'd matched two-to-one with beers) and was starting on her third. "Of course not."
"So ... I tell you I used to torture kitty cats, and that stops you from wanting to jump my bones?"
"Did you?"
"Fuck, no."
"I'll go first," Sasha said.
She'd started shoplifting at thirteen with her girlfriends, hiding beaded combs and sparkly earrings inside their sleeves, seeing who could get away with more, but it was different for Sasha—it made her whole body glow. Later, at school, she'd replay every step of what had happened, counting the days until they could do it again. The other girls were nervous, competitive, and Sasha struggled to show only that much.
In Naples, when she ran out of money, she stole things from stores and sold them to Lars the Swede, waiting her turn on his kitchen floor with other hungry kids holding tourists' wallets, costume jewelry, American passports. They grumbled about Lars, who never gave them what they deserved. He'd played the flute in concerts back in Sweden, supposedly, but the source of that rumor might have been Lars himself. They weren't allowed beyond his kitchen, but someone had glimpsed a piano through a closing door, and Sasha often heard a baby crying. Her first time, Lars made Sasha wait longer than anyone, holding a pair of spangly platform shoes she'd taken from a boutique. And when everyone else was paid and gone, he had squatted beside her on the kitchen floor and unbuttoned his pants.
For months she'd done business with Lars, arriving sometimes without having managed to take anything, just needing money. "I thought he was my boyfriend," she said. "But I think I wasn't thinking anymore." She was better now, hadn't stolen anything in two years. "That wasn't me, in Naples," she told you, looking out at the room. "I don't know who it was. I feel sorry for her."
And maybe from a sense that she'd dared you, or that anything at all could be said in the chamber of truth where you and Sasha now found yourselves, or that she'd blown out a vacuum some law of physics required that you fill, you told her about James, your teammate: how one night, the two of you took out two girls in your pop's car, and after you'd brought them home (early—it was a game night), you and James drove to a secluded place and spent maybe an hour alone in the car. It happened just that one time, without discussion or agreement; the two of you had barely spoken after that. At times you'd wondered if you'd made it up.
"I'm not a fag," you told Sasha.
It wasn't you in the car with James. You were somewhere else, looking down, thinking, That fag is fooling around with another guy. How can he do that? How can he want it? How can he live with himself?
In the library, Sasha spends two hours typing a paper on Mozart's early life and sneaking sips of a Diet Coke. Being older, she feels behind—she's taking six courses a semester plus summer school so she can graduate in three years. She's a business/arts double major, like you, but in music. You rest your head in your arms on the table and sleep until she's done. Then you walk together through the dark to your dorm, on Third Avenue. You smell popcorn from the elevator—sure enough, all three suitemates are home, along with Pilar, a girl you quasi-dated last fall to distract yourself after Sasha paired off with Drew. The minute you walk in, the Nirvana volume drops and the windows fly open. You now seem to be in the same category as a professor or a cop: you make people instantly nervous. There's got to be a way to enjoy this.
You follow Sasha into her room. Most students' rooms are like hamster burrows lined with scraps and tufts of home—pillows and stuffed doggies and plug-in pots and furry slippers—but Sasha's room is practically empty; she showed up last year with nothing but a suitcase. In one corner is a rented harp she's learning to play. You lie face-up on her bed while she gathers her shower bag and green kimono and goes out. She comes back quickly (not wanting to leave you alone, you have a feeling), wearing the kimono, her head in a towel. You watch from the bed as she shakes out her long hair and uses a wide-tooth comb to get the snarls out. Then she slips out of the kimono and starts getting dressed: lacy black bra and panties, torn jeans, a faded black T-shirt, Doc Martens. Last year, after Bix and Lizzie got together, you started spending nights in Sasha's room, sleeping in Lizzie's empty bed, three feet away from Sasha's. You know the scar on her left ankle from a break that had to be operated on when it didn't heal right; you know the Big Dipper of reddish moles around her bellybutton and her mothball breath when she first wakes up. Everyone assumed you were a couple—it was that deep between you and Sasha. She would cry in her sleep, and you'd climb in her bed and hold her until her breathing got regular and slow. She felt so light in your arms. You'd fall asleep holding her and wake up with a hard-on and just lie there, feeling this body you knew so well, its skin and smells, alongside your own need to fuck someone, waiting for the two to merge into one impulse. Come on, pull this all together and act like someone normal for a change, but you were scared to put your lust to the test, not wanting to ruin it with Sasha if things went wrong. It was the biggest mistake of your life, not fucking Sasha—you saw this with brutal clarity when she fell in love with Drew, and it clobbered you with such remorse that you thought at first you couldn't survive it. You might have held on to Sasha and become normal at the same time, but you didn't even try—you gave up the one chance God threw your way and now it's too late.
Out in the world, Sasha would grab your hand or throw her arms around you and kiss you—that was for the detective. He could be anywhere, watching you toss snowballs in Washington Square, Sasha jumping onto your back, her fluffy mittens leaving fibers on your tongue. He was the invisible companion you saluted over bowls of steamed vegetables at Dojo ("I want him to see me eating healthy food," she said). Occasionally you raised practical questions about the detective—Had her stepfather mentioned him again? Did she know for certain it was a man? How long did she think the surveillance would last?—but this line of thinking seemed to irritate Sasha, so you let it go. "I want him to know I'm happy," she said. "I want him to see me well again—how I'm still normal, even after everything." And you wanted that too.
When she met Drew, Sasha forgot about the detective. Drew is detective-proof. Even her stepfather likes him.
It's after ten by the time you and Sasha meet up with Drew on Third Avenue and St. Marks Street. His eyes are bloodshot from swimming, his hair is wet. He kisses Sasha like they've been apart for a week. "My older woman," he calls her sometimes, and loves the fact that she's been on her own in the wider world. Of course, Drew knows nothing about how bad things got for Sasha in Naples, and lately you have the feeling she's starting to forget, begin over again as the person she is to Drew. This makes you sick with envy; why couldn't you do that for Sasha? Who's going to do it for you?
On East Seventh you pass Bix and Lizzie's, but the lights are off—Lizzie is out with her parents. The streets are full of people, most of whom seem to be laughing, and you wonder again about that change Sasha felt when the sun rose in Washington, D.C.—whether these people feel it too, and their laughter is connected to that.
On Avenue A, the three of you stand outside the Pyramid Club, listening. "Still the second band," Sasha says, so you walk up the street for egg creams at the Russian newsstand and drink them on a bench in Tompkins Squa
re Park, which just reopened last summer.
"Look," you say, opening your hand. Three yellow pills. Sasha sighs; she's running out of patience.
"What are they?" Drew asks.
"E."
He has an optimist's attraction to everything new—a faith that it will enrich him, not hurt him. Lately you've found yourself using this quality in Drew, scattering breadcrumbs for him one by one. "I want to do it with you," he tells Sasha, but she shakes her head. "I missed your druggie moment," he says wistfully.
"Thank God," Sasha says.
You pop one of the pills and put the other two back in your pocket. You start to feel the E as soon as you enter the club. The Pyramid is jammed. The Conduits have been big on college campuses for years, but Sasha is convinced their new album is total genius and will go multiplatinum. She likes to get right up against the stage, the band in her face, but you need more distance. Drew stays close to Sasha, but when the Conduits' nutcase of a lead guitarist, Bosco, starts flinging himself around like a berserk scarecrow, you notice him edging back.
You've entered a state of tingling, stomachy happiness that feels the way you hoped adulthood would be as a kid: a blur of lost bearings, release from the drone of meals and homework and church and That's not a nice way to talk to your sister, Robert Junior. You wanted a brother. You want Drew to be your brother. Then you could have built the log cabin together and slept inside it, snow piling up outside the windows. You could have slaughtered the elk, and afterward, slick with blood and fur, peeled off your clothes together beside a bonfire. If you could see Drew naked, even just once, it would ease a deep, awful pressure inside you.
The Best American Short Stories® 2011 Page 9