The Lies We Tell

by Theresa Schwegel

It’s also feasible, if no one answers, that someone will be me.

  I go down the steps, knock on the screen door. Out here it smells like a wet ashtray because of the butt-stuffed beer bottle left sitting on the ledge. It also smells like vomit, but thankfully, that’s from the neighbor’s gingko tree that hangs over the fence.

  I don’t know why I’m thankful about that. I doubt it’s much better inside.

  I knock again, screen rattling. “George? Soleil?”

  Nada.

  I open the screen door and knock on the door. I try the handle. I wonder if they can hear me trying the handle.

  “George,” I say, “I brought some things Isabel needs.” By things I mean my car and me, so we can go back home.

  Nobody responds.

  “George,” I yell, letting the screen slam shut.

  I go back up the steps and crouch down by the window to see if I can hear them, but what I hear is the air-conditioning unit click on for the upstairs unit. Traffic chasing through a green light over on Elston. An airplane curling toward its flight path to O’Hare.

  Maybe for a layover on its way to Atlanta. Or California. Or anywhere Isabel could dream of going. I wish I could take her. I wish we were gone.

  I look over at the window just as Boudelaire noses out through the blinds and sits there, watching me with zero interest.

  “Are they in there?” I ask. I don’t expect an answer from the cat, but I’d like to establish some rapport before I let myself in. I don’t need my eyes scratched out twice.

  I stick my finger through the hole and pull. The screen pops out, and I slide in, feet-first.

  And then, all I smell is filth. It’s the filth that creeps onto everything when the only thing in sharp focus is the flame that lights the pipe, or the bottle that holds the high. It’s spoiled food, cigarette smoke, cat shit, garbage. Moldy towels, spilled beer, dirty clothes. It’s burned-out candles, a backed-up sink. It’s junkie squalor, post-party, when nobody gets sober.

  It isn’t messy, though; it isn’t unlivable. The cat has food and water and there are flowers, still alive, in a vase on the table. But I know it’s all here.

  I open the fridge; there’s white bread, generic peanut butter, and the honey that comes in the bear-shaped container. Also orange juice, and beer. All George’s staples.

  I’m sure Soleil doesn’t stay here. Probably hasn’t come back since the party that started this mess. Probably, she’s been shacking up with whoever caught her eye that night. And George is the idiot who stayed, who cleaned up. Tucked away all their secrets. Made it look like everything is okay.

  Soleil probably did come back once, to feed the cat, maybe. She’d have been high, and upon discovering George was there—and sober—she’d have gone mad. Hard mad. She’d have called George pathetic for thinking he could stay clean. Put his stuff out, told him to try it without her. Stone-cold wished him well. She’d have closed the door and waited for him to leave before she left herself. And she’d have kept control simply by pretending she didn’t want it.

  I know this because she got control in the first place by relieving George’s pain. And by that route, she also very easily showed him just how bad he could hurt.

  I know I showed him some hurt, too. And maybe I steered him back in her direction. But I hope that when George held Isabel in his arms today, he saw through his hurt, and remembered he had dreams of his own once. Dreams that are so much better than this.

  I pet Boudelaire though neither of us cares for it and then I let myself out. As much as I hoped to find Isabel, I’m glad they didn’t come here. The question is: where the fuck else would they go?

  16

  I put my hair up. Eye shadow. I wear a blue slip dress, short but tasteful, the back cut out. I wear perfume. And heels.

  I walk to a dark, trendy bar on Western Avenue. Sportsman’s. I order gin. I choose the booth in the middle, the darkest. I sit there and drink until it’s just as dark outside. I think about the difference between looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found and someone who doesn’t want you looking. I order more gin.

  When I leave, I don’t bother trying George again. Instead, I call Calvin.

  He assumes I’m calling about St. Claire. He says, “I’m not working.”

  I say, “Neither am I.”

  “Do you party?”

  “I’m looking to.”

  We agree to meet. He says where.

  I take a cab to a not-so-dark, not-so-trendy bar. This one on Fullerton. Pool tables and televisions and pitchers of beer. Called the Two Way. I don’t know which way I’m going.

  Dressed in plain clothes, there’s nothing plain about Calvin. He sits at the bar watching baseball, tattoos on his arms following lines of muscle all the way down to his hands, poised around a pint glass. His jawline, defined by a recent shave, makes me nuts.

  “Hi.”

  He turns on his stool, opens his legs. “Hi.”

  The neon that runs around the street-side windows bounces off the bar mirrors, doubled, and I feel dizzy.

  I like having a reason to feel dizzy.

  “You want something to drink?” Calvin puts a hand up for the bartender.

  “I want something.” I want to lean into him. I want him to hold me up. To hold me. “I’ve already had a drink.”

  He quits trying for the bartender. I can’t tell if that cancels other offers.

  “I had a rough day,” I clarify.

  He reaches into his shirt pocket and gives me a peek at the mini plastic zip bag. “Want to have a rough morning?” The tabs are white, a V stamped on each one. I know what they are. Not because I’m a cop. Because I’m George’s sister.

  He opens the pack. “I promise you’ll have fun between now and then.”

  I just saw what this shit does to a person; just took a self-guided tour through addict-rubble. And before that, I’d built my life around protecting Isabel from it. But it was always right there, wasn’t it? Just one bad decision away. Of course, I always thought George would be the one to make it.

  I take the Oxy. Pinch it in my fingers. I say, “Nice not knowing you.” I put it on my tongue.

  The tab sits there for approximately two seconds before I feel it dissolving and I panic—I’ve never taken this drug, and I don’t know what it’ll do with alcohol and steroids and whatever else is left in my system, too—so I say, “This isn’t my scene. I’ll be across the street.” I use Calvin’s solid arm to help myself off the stool and I brush against him on the way out.

  I spit the pill into my hand as I’m crossing Milwaukee Avenue and toss it into some bushes and lick the chalky residue from my fingers before I duck into the Whistler.

  On the red-lit stage, the DJ spins something more upbeat than I’d like; it’s that time of night when most people are just starting to party. I feel like I’m just about done. Then again, I’m usually in pajamas by now reading books with more pictures than words or telling made-up stories in a made-up nest in a made-up life.

  I take the corner seat at the bar. I can’t see the stage, and I don’t care. I ask for water and scan the cocktail list. When the bartender returns I order a Bitter Buddha—a cocktail made from gin, sloe gin, Campari, and absinthe bitters. This way, if Calvin doesn’t show up, I’ll kiss myself good night.

  He shows up. Behind me. My ear. “This better?”

  I turn to him, my legs open this time. “Too many people,” I say, even though it’s only starting to get crowded.

  “You want to go somewhere else?”

  “I just ordered a drink.”

  “You don’t have to drink it.”

  “You don’t have to stay while I do.”

  He looks up, catches the bartender, signals for one of what I’m having. Then he pulls out his wallet. There’s cash. Too much of it.

  “What: you robbed a bank?”

  “Wouldn’t that be a story. Cop falls in love with a wanted criminal.”

  “That would be something.” If I fell in
love.

  “The hospital doesn’t pay the bills,” Calvin says. “I sell a little on the side.”

  I cross my legs. “A little what?”

  “Relief.”

  “Twenty-two,” the bartender says, setting the drinks. I let Calvin pay and take a sip. It tastes like stepping off a cliff.

  I spin around on my stool and my head spins twice. “I’ll be back.”

  The bathroom is a gender-neutral single toilet, same candlelight as the bar. I drop the seat and when I sit down to pee I feel so fucking good: I’ve had enough alcohol for my brain to float in my head just so, just so I can’t worry about anything but peeing, and that’s really nothing to worry about.

  Thank God, I think.

  Which makes me think of George again.

  Then I have to puke.

  I flush and I’m washing out my mouth when someone knocks on the door.

  “Just a second,” I say, and dry my face and hands and find lipstick and hand sanitizer and gum and I’m opening the door thinking how I hate those girls who take for fucking ever, and I’m ready to say sorry, but then there’s Calvin.

  He pushes me back inside and closes the door and locks it.

  He doesn’t say anything, just takes my face in his hands. I wrap my arms around him and we kiss. I taste gin and I don’t know if he can taste bile but if he does it doesn’t faze him. Pretty soon he’s got his arms around me and he lifts me up and sits me on the sink. I’m straddling him and I’m wearing this dress—it could be easy; I could be easy.

  I want to be.

  I reach down between his legs and let him know it.

  Then he pulls me back by my hair to kiss my neck.

  I’ve never really been into that.

  Also, I can feel water from the sink soaking through the back of my dress.

  And I don’t like that my feet aren’t touching the floor. And I hate that I can’t feel my feet.

  And now I’m thinking too much.

  “Wait.” I slide off the sink, pushing him away as I do. When I have my feet firmly planted I say, “Let’s go.” I open the door and lead the way, though I avoid eye contact with anybody who might notice us both exiting. Or my wet dress.

  Calvin follows me outside. “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We could hop the L, head downtown, find a club.”

  “I’m not feeling that bitchy.”

  “We could stay local, find a dive, play the juke.”

  “I’m not feeling that friendly.”

  “Where, then?” He puts his arm around me.

  “Where’s your place?”

  “You want to go to my place?”

  “You have something to hide?”

  “No. But I live in Forest Park.”

  I duck out from under his arm to look at him. “You live in the suburbs?” I sound shocked, which I then find really funny. I’m fairly certain it has to do with the gin and maybe the Oxy, even though I spit it out. It also has to do with the fact that I feel like I’m losing control and the damn funny joke is that I ever thought I had any control in the first place. When I can manage, I ask, “Why do you live in the suburbs?”

  “I live in a suburb and I don’t care if you laugh. I don’t know why everybody thinks this city is so great. My place is affordable and it isn’t shitty and I don’t have to be a security guard when I get home.”

  “Have you washed your sheets lately?”

  “What? Yes, I have.”

  “Okay, then.” I flag a cab.

  We head south. The driver is Pakistani, according to his placard. He has all the windows rolled down; still, the cab smells like old sweat. He smokes while he listens to an AM station where the talk-show host is ranting about national health care. I snuggle up to Calvin, partly so I won’t catch any ash in my hair or eyes and mostly because he smells real good.

  Calvin is less receptive since we caught the cab; I can’t blame him. The ambiance is tough. Still, if he’s feeling half as good as I do, he should be interested.

  He looks out the window, a sudden heaviness to him that makes me wonder if this whole thing is on the downturn.

  I try to think of something to say. I don’t come up with anything. I’m here because I didn’t want to talk, and I’m cuddled up to a man I don’t know at all.

  Then I look out the window, and I see his view: we are approaching Sacred Heart.

  “You must be sick of sick people,” I say, and then I think about what I said and I sit back, because I don’t see him knowing me at all. Knowing me, diseased.

  He watches the place go by. “The doctors are the ones who make me sick. They don’t care about the patients.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “It’s true. All the bullshit they order? And patients don’t know any better. You go in, you think you’re dying, of course you’re going to agree to tests. ‘Diagnostic certainty’ is what they call it. You probably don’t need half the workup, but you’ll never know the difference. Nine times out of ten you’re okay, and ten out of ten, your insurance pays the bill.”

  “What about the uninsurable?” I say, but I think that’s exactly what the guy on the radio just said. I feel a distinct surge of energy. The cab windows look like they’re bending; the back of the front seat seems five feet away from me. I reach for it, but I can’t reach it.

  “It’s a conspiracy,” Calvin says, “when the only way to get by is to close your eyes.”

  “To get by what?” I ask. I close my eyes.

  “Making a living, I’m talking about.”

  “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.” I’m really tripping.

  “I sell scrips, Gina. And I tell myself I’m helping people. Helping them feel better.”

  “I feel better.” I don’t, actually. “I don’t, actually. I feel … unusual.”

  “That’s the cotton. You know what the docs call it, when they snow you? Deagitation. They act like it’s all part of treatment.”

  I ask, “What cotton? What snow?”

  The car speeds up, and when I open my eyes the driver has merged onto 290 and joined the race west. He turns up the radio, probably so he doesn’t have to listen to us.

  The radio host says, “Even our insured are in trouble. Because we are so deeply corrupted, so cash strapped, that our doctors cannot afford to treat our sick, and our sick cannot afford to survive. Here’s just one more example: the new drug for Hepatitis C. The patients awaiting the drug all have health insurance. Their doctors are licensed physicians. There is no shortage of the drug—and it’s a cure, I repeat—it is a cure for Hep C. Still, patients cannot get this treatment. Why? Because our state can’t afford it. Did you hear that? We know our legislators are thieves, but did you know they are also murderers?”

  I look over at Calvin, who’s winding a pink rubber bracelet around his wrist. I hadn’t noticed it before. I think it symbolizes breast cancer awareness. I wonder who has cancer. I wonder what color the Hep C folks wear.

  I wonder if Calvin would ever wear an orange bracelet. If he’d care to be MS-aware.

  The driver swerves around a dust-caked semi truck and the interior of the cab seems to bend more, like taffy. I go with it while I think about everything else I can think of—except I try not to think about Isabel, or George, or what the fuck I’m going to do to get her back with me. I don’t have any idea—that’s why I’m here. No idea.

  When we exit the expressway, the cabbie is smoking again. And Calvin is looking at his phone. I’m losing him. Or I’m just lost.

  “Forest Park is fucking far,” I say, to myself I think, except then Calvin looks at me, streetlights winking in his blazed eyes.

  He pockets his phone and reaches for me. “We’re almost there.”

  Then, I’m on top of him. His lips are soft; his hands are too soft. I want to think he’s holding back. I want him to not be able to stop.

  Then the cab stops. The dome light comes on. The driver kills
the radio. He says, “Thirty-three dollars.”

  I slide off Calvin and wipe my mouth and get out. I assume he’ll pay the fare.

  While I stand there and assume, I look up and realize I’m outside Doc Ryan’s, an Irish pub. I know the place is Irish because on the sign, a smirky leprechaun winks at me with a mug of beer in his hand. He looks exactly like the guy painted on the Cloverleaf’s men’s room door.

  When the cab drives off I ask, “What are we doing?”

  “I thought we could get another drink.”

  “We could have done that thirty-three dollars ago.”

  Calvin looks up the street, somewhere real far away. “I don’t think you know what you’re doing. I feel like I’m taking advantage of you.”

  He’s right: I don’t know what I’m doing. But, “There’s no advantage.”

  “When we first met,” he says, “you didn’t seem like trust came easily.”

  “I don’t trust anybody. Trust has nothing to do with this.”

  An old bearded man stumbles out from the bar doors. He knows where he’s going; it’s his feet that aren’t caught up with the plan.

  I know how he feels.

  I take Calvin’s hand. “I don’t want another drink.”

  He says, “I live around the corner.”

  * * *

  Calvin lives on the second floor of a two-flat. I follow him upstairs and into the kitchen. He snaps on a harsh overhead light. I don’t want to be a cop—I don’t want to investigate the place—so I look at his shoes while he gets us water. He wears Pumas.

  He gets four bottles. I take one, he downs another. Then he leads me to the front room. He lets the streetlights be the lights. Heavy, humid air sits inside the open windows. It feels raw. How I want it.

  He says “Have a seat” about the only couch. He messes with his tech for some music.

  I don’t feel like sitting, so I go to the windows instead. Outside are trees and between them, snips of light from the houses across the street. I focus on the trees. I try to see the dark.

  Calvin plays a popular song I know but can’t place, giving me a few years on him. The melody is electric, the base a thrumming heartbeat.

  I twist the cap on my water bottle. It isn’t carbonated, obviously, but the bottle constricted in the fridge and now it spills down my dress, a cold shock. I take a sip that tastes like nothing and everything and I swear I can feel it when it gets to my stomach, the cold, and pretty soon I’m thinking of ice caps and water shortages and that I’m made of water, mostly. And I’m so, so thirsty.