“See? This doesn’t hurt, right?”
Kezia blinked when the petals came near her eye. “No, it doesn’t.”
The week before that, they were waiting at the crosswalk outside a church on Seventh Avenue, where a homeless man lay slumped on the steps, holding a cardboard sign.
“I feel like Sharpie should sponsor the homeless.”
“Ha,” Kezia said.
“Really. If I ever need a Sharpie to jot something down, I’m just going to ask a homeless person. Or do you think it’s one long-lasting marker they use and they just take turns passing it around?”
The week before that Rachel had asked Kezia not to wear perfume to the office, beginning her request with the formality of “I know this sounds insane but . . .”
Kezia braced herself, considering the number of unheralded insane things that passed Rachel’s lips each day. I know this sounds insane but I’ve just killed a man in the stairwell and stuffed him with cotton candy and could use your assistance threading it through his ocular cavity.
The “no perfume” rule was upsetting because Kezia didn’t wear perfume. She sniffed her armpits—just soap and deodorant and a hint of body odor.
“Is there a scent you’d prefer?” Kezia asked, lamentably.
“Christ.” Rachel scrunched her nose. “Smell like nothing. Smell invisible.”
THREE
Nathaniel
The morning haze had yet to burn off. It was the hour at which Los Angeles feels most like San Francisco. Nathaniel went for a run around the reservoir, kicking up sand, watching women in the dog park. He ran back up the hill, too, the whole way.
A month ago, after years of extolling the health benefits of a life in L.A., something inside his body had turned on him. He felt fatigued no matter how much he slept or how much hot yoga he did. Sometimes he experienced shortness of breath just walking across a studio lot. He was about to turn thirty, not fifty. So he went to a nutritionist in Inglewood, who told him to incorporate more zinc in his diet and drink more water. Then he went to an energy healer, who told him more or less the same thing, but tacked on some meditative breathing exercises. Then he went to a kinesiologist, who suggested he keep both his legs elevated above his heart whenever possible. Especially when in the shower.
“Even when in the shower?”
“No,” said the kinesiologist, “especially.”
It all worked for a while, but then one day he was sitting at home, legs up, trying to work, and his vision blurred. The page of dialogue he had just written transformed into impenetrable chunks of black squiggle. His heart started racing like a hummingbird’s. That’s what he told the cardiologist, who told him that if that were true, he’d be dead.
“Super dead,” he clarified, “twelve hundred beats per minute.”
Then the cardiologist told him that a whale beat would also be cause for concern (six beats per minute) and that giraffes have a second heart in their necks. Apparently, he was leaning toward veterinary medicine before switching to humans.
The cardiologist conducted the usual tests for abnormalities. It wasn’t a palpitation. It wasn’t an arrhythmia. It wasn’t a panic attack, either. Well, Nathaniel could have told him that. He didn’t have an office job or a mortgage or kids to panic about, just the steady pressure of being one of Los Angeles’s two million aspiring TV writers. As many as a whole day’s worth of hummingbird heartbeats.
No, Nathaniel’s heart appeared to be a dutiful muscle, opening and shutting its valves firmly. So what was it, then? At long last, his second electrocardiogram came back, bearing the gift of a diagnosis: Nathaniel had an abnormally small heart.
“For a guy in the prime of his life, you have an abnormally small heart. It’s not serious, you’re not going to keel over. But it could explain the sudden, uneven heart rate and the lightheadedness. Do you smoke?”
Nathaniel shook his head.
“Do you exercise?”
He thought it was clear that he did. He was a naturally slim person but a belly would appear on his abdomen if he did nothing to deter it. He had been very successful in keeping it at bay. Still, the doctor told him that he needed to get his heart rate up more often.
“That’s why athletes have huge hearts,” he said, removing his stethoscope.
Nathaniel considered the drug and sex scandals that plagued professional athletes. He started to say it, sitting there in his underwear, “they’re not known for their huge hearts.” Then he thought better of it. This doctor had chosen the most symbolic specialty in all the medical profession. He’d probably had it with otherwise intelligent people conflating medicine and symbolism. Nathaniel was no different. He knew that if he had received the opposite diagnosis—that of a swelled heart, bursting out of his chest—he would have told anyone who would listen. He would have used it to gain access to the sympathies and beds of women especially. Not that he needed the assistance, but man: what a deal-sealer.
He would have used it to win back the attention, if not the affection, of Bean, a painfully attractive but mediocre actress who had blown him off months ago. Bean was so hot, in one night he went down on her four times and cooed at photos of her new pet rabbit in between.
He ran faster up the hill. No matter how fast he ran, his diagnosis felt more like a verdict. He couldn’t escape the symbolism. He had not loved a member of the opposite sex in approximately ever. Maybe he never would. And it wasn’t just humans for which he lacked passion. His love for a life of writing and literature, once fueled by an intense, gut-level admiration of stories and novels, was now fueled by the external forces of fame and wealth. He confused competition with love and because everyone in Los Angeles was equally as confused, he felt totally sane.
Now he was going to doctors because his heart knew what his mind didn’t.
He stood next to the refrigerator, refilling his water from the door and panting while his housemate, Percy, went back and forth from the kitchen with a plate of eggs. Nathaniel stood there, sweating, watching Percy add more hot sauce with each trip.
“Or you could take the bottle with you.”
“When do you leave again?”
“Tomorrow.” Nathaniel put his glass down.
“And whose wedding is this?”
“You don’t know her. Girl from college.”
“Kezia?”
“No, random chick. You don’t know her.”
“Nonsense. I know everyone, old man.”
Percy went back to watching a movie in the living room. Some screener that displayed its screener status every five minutes. Old man? Nathaniel realized that, in addition to the heavy panting, he had been touching his lower back. So he stopped.
FOUR
Victor
The island was a splotch on the map, as if the globe had started to get a tattoo but changed its mind. A neighboring mansion jutted out at the end of the bay, lights on, a gold tooth on a dark grin. There was a clap of thunder and children scrambled under tablecloths, trying on the thrill of fear. Phone in hand, Caroline’s father tapped his thumb on the screen to confirm the storm. A National Weather Service chart enumerated the knot-by-knot differences between a tropical depression and a hurricane. According to the chart, they were in a depression.
“That sounds about right,” Victor mumbled.
Kezia smacked him on the arm with the back of her hand. How long had she been standing there? Normally he could smell her presence like sulfur from the ground.
“Play nice.” She threw a glance at his third Maker’s-on-therocks.
“It’s an open bar.” He flicked the stem of her wineglass. “Play at all.”
“I’m not the one who’s miserable.” Her face hardened. “Granted, the line between giddy and suicidal is hard to peg with you, but something is up. Shall we go by category? Job?”
Victor cleared his throat. First shot out of the gate.
“Love life? Apartment? Family? VD?”
“Are you drunk?”
“Maybe. B
ut you’ve been avoiding everyone this entire wedding.”
“Where’s your friend?”
“Who, Nathaniel? He’s your friend, too. Even Olivia asked where you went. I’ve never heard Olivia ask why someone else isn’t at a party in my life.”
“That’s sweet, but I’m nowhere near you guys’ table. I’m not Gumby.”
She swished her wine around her glass, creating a tiny whirlpool.
“Are you mad at me? Did I do something?”
“Not everything is about you.”
“So there is something. Is it a girl? I knew it. What’s her name?”
“Shut the fuck up. Her name is Shut-the-Fuck-Up Johnson.”
“Oh, so she’s black?”
He couldn’t blame her for thinking the problem was a girl.
Imagine this scene, roughly a decade ago: Victor standing, intoxicated, outside her dorm window, after one of several holiday formals. (Back in high school, he had assumed that college would mark the end of dances and the cruelty that came with them. Maybe at a state school.) It was just before Christmas break and he could see his breath. He kicked plastic cups and glitter—the fun-torn earth—and threw handfuls of gravel at Kezia’s window.
“What are you doing?” she asked from where she stood.
Which was next to him, side-by-side on the concrete path, arms crossed.
“Trying to get you to come to the window so you can tell me you love me.”
“I’m right here.”
“Yeah, I’m aware of that. But I don’t particularly like the you that’s right here. Because she just told me she doesn’t love me back. Which is bullshit.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m being real.”
“You’re like a girl.”
“You’re like a girl.”
“I am a girl!”
“Ah,” he waved his finger, “but not yet a woman.”
He was bloodshot, sweaty, and so very drunk.
“Victor”—she removed a bobby pin from her hair—“it’s been four years.”
“Three and a half.”
“If we wanted to hook up with each other, we would have by now.”
“Who is this ‘we’?”
“You know . . .”
“What? Tell me.” He spun his hand in a circle. “We’re in a sharing space.”
“Fine. What happens, in your mind, after tonight?”
Victor looked down. He didn’t have to cross his eyes to see the tip of his nose. That always bothered him.
“Here, I’ll start you off: You’re drunk and you want to kiss me.”
“Not right this second, no.”
“And then what happens to our friendship after tonight? You think this is the cute story of how we got together? That we were best friends and then, senior year, you got lonely and thought, hey, here’s a vagina with a decent-looking head on top? That you badgered me into dating you? That’s how you always imagined this would go with the girl of your dreams?”
“Of course not.”
“See?”
“I never wanted the girl of my dreams. I wanted you.”
“I can’t believe this is happening.”
“And you are not just a vagina head girl.”
At this, the tension was temporarily cut. But he knew tension to be a supernatural creature that would heal back into fighting condition within seconds. He put his hand on her shoulder, both to steady himself and to level with her.
“You’re pretending to be offended so that it’s easier for you to dismiss this as one mistaken night.”
“Why would I do something like that?”
He wasn’t going to plunge the knife in for her. Because you don’t feel the same way about me.
“Victor, I know.” She put one of her hands over one of his. “I’m sorry.”
“Who’s closer than we are? Who?”
“Victor . . .”
“Also, last semester you told Nat that The Sweet Smell of Success is your favorite movie and I introduced you to that movie.”
“It’s Nathaniel. He’s started going by the whole thing.”
“Since when?”
“I think he thinks people associate it with Hawthorne.”
“That’s not even a good association. And he’s not even a Jew, on a side note. But okay. You told Nathaniel that the only movie you’ve ever seen from the fifties happens to be your favorite when all your other DVDs have Laura Linney on the cover. But you know what? I don’t even mind not being credited. That’s how close we are.”
“Victor.”
“I don’t have the option to shorten my name, you know. I’d sound like an extra in The Godfather. Which you probably haven’t seen either.”
“Victor!”
“What?”
“It’s one degree outside and you’re not wearing shoes.”
This was true. He was barefoot. He couldn’t remember why. There was the slightest chance he had dropped his shoes in a recycling bin filled with grain alcohol.
Across the dark quad, Grey and Paul were walking home from the formal, arms linked in an alabaster pretzel. They were always poised to be the couple in their class who made it on the outside, a regular Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. Grey waved. But Paul, who recognized male defeat when he saw it, slapped his girlfriend’s arm down and kept them on course. A sentiment of barely audible confusion left Grey’s mouth. Paul whispered in her ear. Whatever he said, it was something Victor would never want to hear.
“Them,” Kezia said softly.
“What about them?”
As much as he abhorred the idea of witnesses to this humiliation, when Grey and Paul vanished, they took the implied parallel of coupledom with them.
“They’re closer.”
“Fuck you,” he offered.
“Oh, okay.”
“Maybe don’t mock me.”
“You know what? Maybe don’t be so mockable!”
“You’re cruel.”
“And you’re having a temper tantrum.”
“Fuck you. You, who are fucked!” he shouted. “You . . . bitch.”
He sprayed her face in spit, saw it glisten on her cold nose under the path light. He towered over her, pointing. His finger was too close to her face but he couldn’t move it. Three and a half years of frustration had gathered in his fingertip. He wanted to poke her in the eye. She saw that. Which was almost the same as going ahead and poking her in the eye.
“Don’t say another word to me.” She looked down at the glitter.
Then she dialed a code into the metal box attached to her dorm and let the heavy door shut behind her.
Down the slope of the lawn, the lights of the library flickered off. Everything was dark except for the overhead path lights. He slumped against an oak tree. Next thing he knew, it was morning. Blackbirds were chirping and some freshman girls were jogging, wearing the hoodies of their high school track teams. He walked home, shivering, picking rocks from between his toes.
“Mwah!!”
This was from Emily Cooper, inked on his dry-erase board. She signed it so that the “y” of her name morphed into a heart-shaped balloon.
“Time wounds all heels!” Caroline had written, in her own bubble script.
They must have been on their way to Sunday brunch in the dining hall (ready-made eggs Benedict with Hollandaise shell, served in heated trays). They must have knocked. He hadn’t heard. He was popping Xanax and washing it down with Robitussin. Even for a twenty-one-year-old with a peer-condoned drinking problem, he was sleeping late. How many people had Kezia told?
For a week he avoided human contact, skipping class, microwaving his meals, pretending he was being held hostage. He appeared often enough, flip-flopping down the hall in shower sandals a size too small for him. But that was about it. He slept through parties of familiar voices in the hall. His strongest relationships were with a thirty-pack of Bud Light, a box of frozen burritos, and a slow-to-load site called wetfucks.com.
> Eventually, Kezia came calling.
“Victor!” She knocked. “Victor! Victor?”
There was no way he was opening the door for her. For four years, during that endless string of nights calling itself “college,” he had dreamed of nothing but her voice, calling his name in ecstasy. Now he heard her say it in pity. He stayed very still while she knocked, lifting the tab of a beer can in slow motion. He watched the crack at the bottom of the door, waiting for the shadow of her feet to pass.
His guy friends began to stir. Initially they assumed he could clean up his own mess. But now real time had passed, a line had been crossed, and opportunities for casual heroism revealed themselves.
“Golf on Sat,” wrote Paul, “driving early a.m. lmk.”
Victor had never once expressed an interest in golf.
“Diner run, asswipe,” added Nathaniel.
Sam bypassed the dry-erase board entirely and wrote across Victor’s door in permanent block letters: “Good luck beating that rape charge.”
Then the notes stopped.
Then the knocks stopped.
Then another week passed.
People gave up on him.
One insignificant Wednesday, Victor emerged from his room like a groundhog. He woke up, stretched, and beat the crumbs from his mattress. He felt like Forrest Gump, deciding to get up and go, to escape his pain.
When he made it from his dorm room to the west entrance of campus undetected, he felt exhilarated. Like a prison break. People had already started to leave for Christmas, a holiday that was acknowledged but not a rocket ship launch in the Wexler household. The problem was there wasn’t anywhere to go. There are “college towns” with independent bookstores and coffee shop tip jars that say things like “alms for the pour.” But their college town was economically depressed. It was a whaling hub in its heyday, a couple of centuries ago, and it had been auditioning industries ever since. The current residents seemed unaware that a college was in their midst. Even the professors lived on campus.
Victor didn’t have a car. That was another problem. After the romance of deciding to simply walk out of college wore off, the practical problems of meandering along the weed-and-litter-covered borders of highways sank in. Cars that seemed to come closer as they passed him, exhaust fumes, weird noises from the brush, roadkill. His destinations were narrowed to a gas station, a tanning salon, a BBQ joint called the Rib Cage (The Rib Cage: We’re Always Open), and the mall.
The Clasp Page 3