Last Train to Babylon

by Charlee Fam

  “Hello.” I almost sing it into the phone. There’s silence and heavy breath on the other line, like he’s trying to find his tone.

  “Where the hell have you been,” he says. “I’ve been trying to get you all day.” I stifle a laugh. He’d only called twice and texted less than an hour ago. That’s hardly an attempt. Rachel would have been way more persistent than that, I’m sure.

  “Did I ever tell you that I had my tonsils out,” I start to say, the words slurring off my tongue.

  “Aubrey.”

  “Don’t say my name like that. It’s condescending.” I open my windows, and the rain pounds inside the car.

  “I talked to your mom,” he says, and I feel my body go slack.

  I’d been sort of honest with Danny back in college. Not completely honest, but as close as I could have been.

  “It was messed up,” I had said the first time he asked me about losing my virginity. “I don’t want to talk about it.” We were at Brown, squished in his twin dorm bed.

  235

  “Who was it?” he’d asked. We were both naked, tangled in a thin jersey-knit sheet. Danny traced his finger over my tattoo.

  “It wasn’t Adam,” I said. He had known about Adam. As much as I was willing to share about him. That was never something I could have hidden from Danny. He was my high school boyfriend, and my mother would forever compare Danny to the first boy I brought home. “It was some guy,” I said. “Just some douche bag. I was drunk. I didn’t want it to happen. You know how it is.”

  Danny was quiet. He wasn’t appalled, outraged, or ready to vindicate me. I didn’t really expect him to be either. Instead, he just pulled himself closer to me and said, “Yeah, it happens.”

  I can still hear him breathing on the line.

  “I talked to your mom,” he says again. “She told me everything.” I don’t say anything, just sit in my driver’s seat clutching the bottle in one hand and my phone pressed against my ear. I reach for the radio and crank up the music, Tracy Chapman again, until I feel it reverberate through my shitty old car, and the speakers throb.

  So remember when we were driving, driving in your car. Speed so fast it felt like I was drunk.

  “Don’t call me again,” I say, before hanging up the phone and throwing it in the backseat.

  I take one last swig, feeling the boozy brown liquid warm my veins, and I hoist myself up out of the car.

  236

  I WALK INTO the bar and time stands still. Like a movie, everyone stops and stares toward the door, but it’s not a smooth entrance—not the kind where The Girl walks in and she’s got this glow around her and everyone just watches, grinning at her in slow motion as she flips her hair back and forth before walking through the crowd. It’s not like that at all. It’s not glamorous, and no one smiles. They just stare, holding long-neck bottles of light beer to their parted lips. Someone whispers, someone even says my name, but not to me. No one says my name to me.

  It smells like Clorox and beer, and the fluorescent lights flicker overhead. There should never be fluorescent lights in a bar; it’s unnatural and it illuminates the crowd, who’re all still dolled up in their best black. From across the room, I spy the guy from the train—Frank, or Gary or Louis—and he shifts his gaze to the floor. He wears the Rachel T-shirt over his black button-down. The white cotton tee stretches over the bulky material of his dress shirt; he looks lumpy and out of place, and Rachel’s face hangs crookedly over his chest; and she watches me, those eyes, and her Cheshire cat grin. Most of the guys have loosened their ties, and I just stand there, in my black cotton dress, and wring the rain out of my hair.

  237

  It’s nothing like that last night at O’Reilly’s—the way the band started up, and everyone danced, and Rachel swung her hips into Rod and I stood back staring at the front door, waiting for Adam. It’s not like that night at all. The mood is different—somber, and it’s still sort of light out. There’s no music, but I see some guy setting up a DJ booth by the back. I remember the college band that played that Pat Benatar song that last night here, and how it sounded hazy and dark, like a bad dream, and I wonder what happened to them, if they ever made it beyond the local bar scene. I think of that night, and I think about Rod, and I wonder if he’s here, but I doubt it. He’d been the only guy to notice Rachel that night, and now everybody’s here for her and only her. She would have loved this.

  I stand near the door, and Chloe’s the first to come at me. It takes me a moment to process her face. The last time I saw her, she was twelve, with a mouth full of braces and too much eyeliner. Now she’s got a decent set of teeth and her hair hangs in loose curls around her narrow jawline. She looks nothing like Rachel, but sort of moves like her, I notice as she swings her shoulders from side to side and steps in front of me.

  “Oh my God, Aubrey,” she says. She holds me by the shoulders and looks at me for a second, like she’s assessing how much I’ve grown, but I want to push her off, I want to take her by the face and say, Little girl, get the hell out of this place.

  She’s sixteen, not even old enough to be here. But it’s her sister’s funeral, and if she’s anything like Rachel—if she’s anything like me—then she’s popped her O’Reilly’s cherry way before this.

  And then I see him, leaning against the bar, in a button-down shirt and a mint-green tie.

  238

  Chloe pulls me closer, rests her chin on my shoulder, and says, “I’m so happy you came. It would have meant so much to Rachel.” I mumble something and start to back away toward the door, but she’s still got her hands on me, and I can’t go anywhere. I feel my phone buzz inside my bag. It’s probably just Karen. She’s been calling me nonstop since this morning, but all I can think about is that voice mail. Rachel’s voice mail, lingering—trapped inside my BlackBerry. If Chloe was the one to find Rachel’s body, did she also find her phone? Did she know that I was most likely her final phone call?

  I start to feel it in my chest—like a burst of sulfur—and I wonder if she can smell the whiskey on my breath. The dull lights start to spin, slowly, and everything starts to shift sideways. I can still feel them staring.

  And then I hear my name again. Chloe’s still got her hands around me, and I’m standing stiff, with my arms pinned down at my sides, and then the voice is close—right beside us, but I can still see him, leaning against the bar, laughing, smiling, holding a bottle of Bud.

  “Is this Aubrey?” I look up and see this heart-shaped face and wiry blond hair spattered over the shoulders of a charcoal blazer. “I’ve heard so much about you,” she starts, and swipes at her watery brown eyes. I give her this look, like I have no idea who you are, lady, and her whole face softens into this weak smile. “I’m Rachel’s cousin.” Chloe’s still got her arms on me, everyone stares, and the bar floor is still slick with Clorox and beer. “Diane,” she says, pressing her fingers against my wrist.

  I remember the countless times Rachel would casually namedrop Diane into a conversation, like that somehow gave her an edge over the rest of us, like her experiences transferred over to Rachel simply by association. But I’d never actually seen her—not in the flesh—and as she stands before me, blubbering over her poor cousin—I feel like I’m in the presence of a celebrity.

  “Diane?” I sputter, pushing Chloe away. I don’t mean to laugh, but I do, and I feel giddy, and the cousins exchange a look, and then both put their hands on my shoulders again. “Like ‘The Diane’?” I’m talking too loud, I know I am, because both girls lean in close and start to whisper to me. I’m not really sure what they’re trying to say, but I don’t need to hear it, so I keep on talking. My blood starts to do that buzzing thing again, and I push them away. “I can’t believe you’re real,” I say. “I can’t believe you’re actually real.”

  “Honey,” Diane says, lowering her voice, “let’s get you some water, okay?”

  “The Diane,” I keep saying. “Un-fucking-believable.” I still see him at the bar, laughing,
smiling, with his bottle of Bud and mint-green tie.

  239

  “Chloe,” Diane says, signaling with the flick of her wrist. “Get Aubrey a glass of water.” She’s got me by my own wrist, leading me to a bar stool. I pull away, too hard.

  “Come, sit down, honey,” she says. “Sober up.” I put my hand up between us.

  “Do you realize,” I say, I think I may be slurring, just a little bit, “that you directly led to every act of debauchery I ever participated in?” I’m laughing again.

  She laughs, too, but it’s a nervous laugh, and she looks behind her at Chloe and mouths, Water. Now.

  240

  “No, listen,” I say, backing away. “Like everything we did was because ‘Diane did it first.’” I look around the room, but don’t take my eyes off of him for more than a few seconds, and everything in me stirs. I see Ally, though, standing nearby, and I wave my arms at her, turning my attention away from him—anything to turn my attention away from him. “Ally,” I call across the room. I know she hears me, but she only offers a tight-lipped smile and looks back over at the Girl I Can’t Remember. “Ally,” I say. “Are you seeing this? It’s Diane. It’s the Diane.” She doesn’t give any indication that she hears me, and then I remember Monday night at her house, and all those things she said.

  We heard you did something bad. You really weren’t there for her, were you? She really could have used her best friend in the end.

  I look back toward Diane, and I try to smile, but the lights start to spin again, and I’m standing still, but everything else starts to shift.

  “Let’s not make a scene, honey,” Diane says.

  “No, listen to me, Diane. I don’t think you understand what I’m saying.” She feigns a smile and glances toward the exit. I realize I’m stuttering, and I know I need to just shut up. Just shut up shut up shut up. But I can’t, and I feel the words start to fall out of my mouth again. And I know that Diane is just a temporary distraction, that the moment I stop rambling, I’ll have to acknowledge him, in the corner, with his mint-green tie. “She got me to do everything because of you! Because of the glorious Diane!” I say. “Except for coke. Rachel never got me to do coke.” I lean in. “You don’t have any on you right now, do you?” She drops her hand from my wrist and turns to the crowd of mourners, still in their best black, still here for Rachel.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “That was a joke.” But Diane is still eyeing the crowd, and Chloe looks like she might cry, or laugh, or both, and everyone else just stares around the room.

  241

  “Does someone want to take this girl home?” she says, and I think almost everyone in the bar takes an awkward sip from their drinks.

  Poor Rachel, they’re all thinking it. Poor, fragile Rachel. The room feels hazy, and I feel the swell of panic bubbling up from my guts, and I think I might vomit if I don’t shut my mouth, and bite down on my tongue, and I don’t understand what these people are thinking, all standing around, sad and sorry, in their black suits and Rachel T-shirts, as if somehow her death makes her more interesting—a dreamy, romantic image of a young girl, frozen in youth and beauty. But she wasn’t beautiful. And the fact that these people now have this image, that she took her own life, so therefore she must have been deep, dark, and complicated—a true tragedy—like somehow her feelings matter more now, the fact that they’re all thinking this makes me want to claw my face into ribbons. And I feel cheap. Cheap, like everything I’m feeling, these nerves, these anxieties, they’re all just the insecurities of a little girl, a silly, sad little girl.

  242

  The room shifts sideways again. And they all continue to celebrate her, sip their well drinks, and say, It’s what she would have wanted. Oh, Rachel, that spark plug! The center of attention, in life and death. But nobody sees the irony. Nobody sees that she’s dead because nobody cared enough to know the real Rachel, the person beneath the party girl. And I want to shout, I want to shout it that she didn’t kill herself because she was bored. They didn’t know her like I did. They never found the girl sobbing over their bathroom sink because she didn’t feel loved by her own mother. They never picked her up from the beach at 3 A.M. after some stocky guy with a buzz cut discarded her like a piece of trash. They never sat across from her at a diner while she pleaded for help.

  I start to back out toward the door, my hands at my side, my perfectly manicured hands.

  “Get off me,” I say, stumbling back. “Who made you Mayor of the After-Party?” My hands flail out, and Diane flinches. I sputter and laugh, and I see him still, calm, casual, spinning his bottle of Bud on the bar. I don’t make eye contact; instead I make it a point to get the hell out of here.

  I start toward the door, but turn one last time to face the bar. I scan the crowd, and I see Eli and Ashley for the first time that night. They’re leaning against the back wall, and she whispers something into his ear, and he shakes his head and stares down at the floor. Marc’s near the DJ booth, and he pretends not to know me either. I steady myself, shifting my weight onto my five-inch heels. I realize that I’m still soaking wet, and I can’t figure out how they’re all so dry. I guess they must have brought those umbrellas after all.

  “What are you looking at?” I finally say, loud and sharp, but nobody responds. The room is quiet, except for a couple of muffled whispers near the back end of the bar. “Anybody?” I say. My voice echoes, and still nobody speaks. I feel Diane creeping up from behind.

  “Ash?” I say. “What happened? I thought we were besties?” Ashley smiles all nervously, and Eli puts his arm around her and reaches into his pocket for his phone.

  “You’re not calling Karen, are you?” I blurt, but he ignores me and walks into the bathroom. Ashley trails behind.

  243

  “What about you, Melanie?” I say. She catches my eye for only a moment, and stares down at her drink. It’s something dark and pink and mostly ice. She looks heavier than she did at the diner, even though she’s dressed in all black and wearing too much lipstick. It makes her look desperate.

  “So you’re all just going to stand there, then? Like a bunch of fucking losers?”

  I step back, and brush against a table near the door that’s draped over with a white tablecloth. It’s stained with what looks like wing sauce, and whoever’s job it was to pick the tablecloth clearly thought nobody would notice. There’s a framed photo of Rachel—an eight-by-ten of her high school graduation. It’s campy and sad, but at the same time kind of appropriate. Next to Rachel’s face there’s the row of shot glasses from Ally’s, lined up in perfect formation. I walk toward the display and finger the cloth, and everybody watches me. I hear Diane behind me, like she’s trying to shuffle me out the door.

  “What?” I whip around to face her again.

  “You need to leave. You’re making a scene,” she says. “I know you’re upset, Aubrey.”

  “Don’t say my name like that,” I say. “It’s condescending.” I’m raising my voice, and I don’t mean to, but she puts her hand on my wrist again, and I snap back, and push her away, and then I feel myself fall, taking down the white, wing-stained cloth, and all the glasses come shattering to the floor.

  244

  There are so many sounds, but mostly it’s just the buzzing in my own head, and I can vaguely hear Diane’s frantic cries as she scoops up the broken pieces off the ground. Somebody calls out for a broom, and Adam comes at me. He reaches down and pulls me to my feet before I can even fight him off. He’s bigger and scruffier than I imagined, but I don’t really feel anything when I see him for the first time, and this surprises me. I just feel dull and empty, like I want to nudge him in the shoulder and tell him that we both really fucked things up, didn’t we? But I just don’t have the energy.

  I hear the train rumbling overhead.

  And I can’t take my eyes off Eric Robbins, in his button-down and mint-green tie.

  OUTSIDE, I STUMBLE across the street to the train-station parking lot. I’m still s
oaked, but now the rain pounds harder, drenching the black cotton dress, and it molds to my body. I don’t care, though. It feels good.

  I look up at the brick building and think of jumping. It wouldn’t be the worst thing. Maybe some bored sap would even throw me an after-party of my own—my grinning face plastered crookedly over some random guy’s chest, my name engraved onto a row of frosted shot glasses.

  I see my car ahead, parked up against the station. I walk toward it, steady, heel to toe. The rain saturates my skin and burns my eyes, and I think I might be crying underneath all that water falling from the sky, but I can’t be sure; I swore I wouldn’t cry, so I can’t be sure. I jam the key into the door, fumble until the lock pops, and hoist myself up into the driver’s seat. The engine sputters to life, shaking and rumbling beneath me. My hands vibrate against the wheel, and I can’t tell where my own body shakes end and the car’s shaking begins.

  245

  Fuck you, Rachel, I say. Fuck you Rachel. Fuck you Rachel, and I keep saying it, I keep saying it until my face crumbles and the tears and rain melt together and I’m full-on sobbing in my Saab, and I laugh, I fucking laugh, because it’s somehow hilarious to me that I would be sobbing in a Saab. Fuck you, Rachel.

  I pull my knees to my chest, and wedge myself against the oversized steering wheel. “Fast Car” plays again. I reach in my center console for a Parliament but I don’t smoke it. The thought of putting that thing to my mouth makes my guts twist and my mouth feel like it’s made of sand, so I balance it on the ashtray and let the smoke stream off the end.

  I dissolve a Xanax on my tongue and reach for the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the passenger seat. I think of Adam and I think of my life before and my life after Eric and how everything in between stopped mattering and everything after feels like tiny knives carving out my insides and how now I’m sitting in a parking lot with a bottle of Jack and an empty chest. I hold it to my lips and take a deep swig, the hot whiskey burning the back of my throat, burning a hole in my chest where I’m hollowed out like a dead deer.