You Have Seven Messages

by Stewart Lewis

  “How the hell did you do this?” I ask him.

  “Isaac, the guy in the penthouse. He shows movies up here sometimes. I tutor his son in math, so I pulled a string.”

  “Wow.” There I go again. Surfer talk.

  As always, the movie is riveting and very human. I’m so happy that I don’t even mind Oliver falling asleep a little toward the end. When the credits roll I catch him looking at me with that incredible smile. I blush a little and turn toward him, waiting for the inevitable, and there it is again: his violet lips, soft as a cloud, and everything becomes irrelevant. I am drowning in a moment I hope will never end.

  The next day Oliver meets me at the Creperie. I thank him profusely for the movie and he waves it away like it was nothing. He gets a call from his father, I can tell by his voice. He becomes very tense, and it’s strange watching the transformation. When he hangs up I say, “Gosh, he must really have some claws on you.”

  “You don’t even know. He calls me like three times a day. He knows my routine has changed since I met you, and he’s not happy about it.”

  I feel my heart sink a little.

  “He doesn’t want you to have a life?”

  “Not really. He’s only concerned with my cello and my schoolwork. He’s like, you can have fun later. It’s weird, though, because he doesn’t even live with me and it’s like a shadow following me. He’s really strict, like his father was with him.”

  We get ginger ales and pommes frites, and again, he orders in perfect French.

  “We have to talk to this Cole character,” I tell him.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  “How much worse can it get?”

  He looks at me and smiles, and for a second everything goes away, like the kiss on the roof. My face is probably the color of a ripe tomato. I feel like I am what love songs are made of.

  On the way downtown, Oliver holds my hand on the subway. I secretly wish the Rachels could see me now. The train lights go off for a minute and Oliver kisses me again, and I hear myself moan with pleasure. I remember Rachel One bringing a porno DVD she had stolen from her brother into school and we watched some of it on her laptop. There was an Asian girl on top of a chubby white guy, and she was almost singing, obviously faking it. I feel like I could do that right now, and wonder if the Asian girl wasn’t. I look at Oliver after the lights go back on. He’s probably never seen a porno. Suddenly I want him to be mine to corrupt, forever.

  We stake out Cole’s apartment again from across the street. A drag queen walks by looking like he/she just got into a fight. She asks us for a cigarette.

  “Do we look like we smoke?” Oliver says.

  She makes a sound with her lips and walks off in a huff.

  “I think she likes you,” I tease.

  “Yeah? I’ve always had a soft spot for transvestites.”

  We share a Snapple and a chocolate bar. I almost feel like it’s another date, like we’re not waiting for my mother’s secret lover to exit his building.

  “Can you imagine feeling like you’re the wrong gender?” I ask.

  “I had this teacher in fifth grade, Mr. Jagel. One Halloween he came to school dressed as a girl. Everyone called him Fag-el after that. The thing is, I really liked him. He wasn’t gay, he was just open-minded. And a little silly.”

  “My mom had so many gay friends. Everyone she worked with. The makeup people, the photographers, even her literary agent.”

  “You mean her gay-gent?”

  I laugh. Oliver’s eyes are pools of warmth, and his hair is so perfect I could cry.

  “My father has a gay-gent too,” I add.

  Oliver smiles. “I remember visiting my cousins who live in Utah. We went to this ski camp and there was this one kid who wore his scarf the French way, you know? And they kept calling him a fag and stuff, and I told them to stop, said that I was gay too just to teach them a lesson.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Besides, the scarf looked kind of cool.”

  “Well, I’m glad we’re not ignorant country bumpkins.”

  “What exactly is a bumpkin, anyway?”

  He looks at me and we both break out into laughter. The moment is quickly squashed by the sound of the large door opening across the street and Cole emerging. I throw away our Snapple and the candy wrapper and we follow him west. He ducks into a coffee shop and we stand outside at a loss.

  “Okay, Fifteen, we’ve got to do something.”

  “When he comes out, ask him for directions.”

  Oliver nods, as if that’s a good plan.

  Cole comes back out wearing huge aviator glasses and carrying a large coffee.

  “Excuse me,” Oliver says, “do you know where the A train is?”

  He stops, gives us a funny look, and says, “You’re on the wrong side of town, I’m afraid.”

  After an uncomfortable moment, I say, “It’s fine, Cole, we’ll figure it out.”

  Oliver looks at me hard.

  “What?” Cole says. “How do you know my name?”

  “Listen,” Oliver says, “do you have a minute?”

  Cole runs his free hand through his hair and nods. I notice that he has very blue eyes. “I could spare a couple.”

  Back inside the coffee shop, a bunch of people are crouched over their laptop screens, and it smells like cinnamon. The sun has overwarmed the place, so I take off my sweater. We sit down at a corner table.

  “This is Luna,” Oliver says, “and from what we understand you were close with her mother.”

  When Cole realizes who I am, he looks at the floor, then out the window, then at his fingernails—anywhere but into my eyes. Oliver excuses himself to go to the bathroom and I start to talk softly.

  “Look, I just want to know what happened. Were you with her at Butter the night she died?”

  “Yes.” He finally looks me in the eyes. “I can’t believe how much you’ve grown. I met you once but you were … little.”

  I plop the cuff links down on the table.

  “Are these yours?”

  Now he looks a little scared. He picks up the cuff links and turns them around in his cupped hand as if they dropped from the sky.

  “Were you there when she got hit by the cab?”

  He looks at me again, his bright eyes burning into mine.

  “How did you find me?”

  “What does it matter?”

  He sips his coffee and his phone rings. He hits mute and puts it in his pocket. I try to see what my mother saw in him. He’s attractive, but maybe he’s like a smooth stone that when turned over reveals darkness underneath. Oliver comes back and sits close, fortifying me.

  “Look, it was no one’s fault. Your dad, he was very distraught.”

  “Duh,” Oliver says.

  “Listen, are you two allowed to be …”

  “No, we’re skipping kindergarten,” I say.

  His phone buzzes again.

  “Luna, listen … your mother was a … friend of mine. I am so sorry about what happened.”

  “Just a friend?” Oliver is skeptical.

  “It’s complicated,” he says. “I’d be happy to talk to you about this further but I have a meeting.” He stands up, bows slightly, then leaves in a daze.

  Oliver and I don’t say anything for a while. Cole has left us calculating in silence. Oliver’s phone rings again and I see it’s his father. He makes a grunting noise and answers it. He walks to the corner and I can tell he is very frustrated. When he finishes the call, he looks up at the ceiling for a minute, as if praying.

  On the way uptown our subway car is empty. I rest my head on Oliver’s shoulder and he brushes his fingers along the underside of my wrist. I listen to the rumble and try to let it drown out the thoughts in my head.

  The last time I saw my mother was the day I left for camp. I came into her room and she and my father were sitting on opposite sides of the bed, facing away from each other. She turned and motioned me toward her, h
ugged me a little too desperately.

  “Make sure you keep in touch while you’re up there,” she said with damp eyes. She was wearing a wispy red scarf tied loosely around her neck. I wasn’t sure if her fragile state was because I was leaving, or if something had happened before I walked into the room. Had they been talking about Cole? Then my father abruptly stood up and said, “Let’s get this show on the road.” It was not the sort of thing he would say, and even though I could sense something was wrong, I was too wrapped up in my own world: the anticipation of camp, who my counselor was going to be, which kids were going to return, whether I had packed everything I needed. Now, as the train continues to barrel through the dark underground, I wonder how I could’ve been so immune to those moments, those signs that I can only see now, after it has all happened, after she’s gone. For the most part they were happy, and I guess I bought into all the good stuff so much that I was in denial about what was underneath. It’s like that line Richard quotes about Mrs. Dalloway, “Always throwing parties to cover the silence.” My parents did entertain a lot, and that is when you put on your game face. I am just so curious now. When did the façade start to crumble?

  I take Oliver to my mother’s studio and he walks around it carefully, as if it’s a crime scene. He sits on the windowsill and says, “Aren’t you going to read more of what she wrote?”

  “Yes, but not today. I usually hate this word, especially ’cause my counselor at school uses it so much, but I still have to process everything.”

  Oliver walks up to me, puts two hands on my shoulders, then pulls me into an embrace. Part of me wants to let go of everything, lose myself in his skin, his silky curls, the pools of his eyes. Instead I just let him hold me.

  Suddenly I realize that I’m starving. As if hearing my thoughts, Oliver says, “Well, could you process a pizza?” I smile and nod.

  We sit at a table in the front of Ray’s Pizza—the original one, yeah right—and eat steaming slices. There are hundreds of “Ray’s Famous” pizza places and every one claims to be the original. Either way, it’s yummy. I get cheese and Oliver gets pepperoni. At first, we are ravenous, and then we both pause to take a break.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asks.

  “What he said about my father being distraught?”

  “Yes. I hate to say this, Fifteen, but I feel like there’s still something he’s not telling you.”

  “I know.”

  We finish our pizza and walk home. On the way he gets another call from his father, and at one point he tells me to hold on and goes into an alley for privacy. I can hear his voice rising and it kind of scares me. The gentle boy has angst. Why is his father so hard on him? He comes back to join me looking really pale, like he just found out someone died.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Not really,” he says, “not at all.”

  While we walk I try not to press him, just let him have his space. He doesn’t hold my hand and I can feel the absence. All of a sudden I feel terribly alone.

  When we get to my stoop, a look comes over his face I have never seen before. The only way I can describe it is cold.

  “I have a recital coming up, it’s a preliminary thing for the Paris show. I have to learn a bunch of new pieces.”

  I feel like I’m standing on a small rock in the middle of the ocean and he’s getting on a boat, waving goodbye. He looks like a totally different person. The eyes that covered me with warmth have now gone somewhere else, looking through me.

  “Cool,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant even though my whole body is practically shaking, its core the epicenter of an impending earthquake. “Thanks for, you know, everything.”

  “I may not be that, well, available for a while.”

  That’s fine, I’ll just stand here until the water rises and I drown.

  “Okay, I understand.”

  And that’s it. He just turns around. No kiss, no touch, no smile. I watch him walk into his house and I stand there for what seems like an hour, until I hear Tile yell down from the window. I look up and see him, waving his hands up in the air, wondering what the heck I’m doing, oblivious to the fact that I may have lost the only boy I’ve ever loved.

  CHAPTER 21

  INNOCENCE

  For the first time ever, I keep Tile out of my room. All I want to do is crawl under a rock and stay there for a year. I know that Oliver’s dad really stresses him out, but I didn’t think the guy ran his life. I think about calling Janine, but decide against it. I busy myself with mindless math homework until I hear the familiar bling of an IM on my computer.

  Dariaposes: Hey girl how is Cello boy?

  Moongirlnyc: Long story—not sure

  Dariaposes: Did you kiss him?

  I blush at the thought of it.

  Moongirlnyc: Yes

  Dariaposes: Then he’ll be back

  Moongirlnyc: ☺ Hope so

  Dariaposes: Listen, I’m working on a show for your photographs—but it’s still a maybe, no green light yet

  Moongirlnyc: What?

  Dariaposes: I took them to my friend who has a gallery in Williamsburg

  I start to type but I can’t find words. A show?

  Moongirlnyc: Omg

  Dariaposes: But need more shots, like maybe 10

  Moongirlnyc: Sure! I was actually going to bring my cam to school

  Dariaposes: Good

  Moongirlnyc: When would it be?

  Dariaposes: Not sure. Does your dad mind us mentioning you’re his daughter?

  I freeze. Please don’t let this be about him. So many times in my life—too many to count—people showed interest in me because they wanted to get to him. I decide to be vague.

  Moongirlnyc: Not sure

  Dariaposes: Doesn’t really matter. But your age will help a lot

  Moongirlnyc: Why?

  Dariaposes: For press … they eat up young talent

  Even though she makes it sound like I’m a cupcake, I’m very intrigued by the idea. Maybe Ms. Gray was right, this could be my calling.

  Moongirlnyc: Whatever you say

  Dariaposes: Work on more shots, and keep it raw

  Moongirlnyc: Ok

  Dariaposes: You’re going to be a star miss Luna

  Moongirlnyc: We’ll see about that

  Dariaposes: And all the cello boys will be lining up

  I blush again, and there’s a knock at my door.

  Moongirlnyc: Gotta go, ttys

  Dariaposes: Ciao4now

  It’s Tile again. This time I let him in. He walks over to my bed, plops himself down, and says, “She’s here again. Mushroom lady.”

  “What?”

  “I figured it out. She smells like mushrooms.”

  “Well, it could be worse.”

  “So what did Dad tell you?”

  I close my laptop, turn to him, and sigh. He’s not going to let up.

  “He just told me she was spending time with someone named Cole.” I walk over and sit down next to him, grab the racquetball he is squeezing out of his hand. “Tile, it doesn’t matter now. Like you said, she’s dead.”

  He looks at me hard. “Dead as a doornail,” he says.

  I give him back the ball and he starts bouncing it on the floor. I don’t want to tell him I’ve met Cole, that she was seeing him, and that there’s something still missing about the night she died. The articles in Page Six and US Weekly on her “tragic death” simply reported that she had been with “a friend.” I had always assumed it was her yoga teacher, like Dad told me. Now I know it was Cole, and I’m afraid of what I might find out, afraid that the information might somehow scar me more than I already am. But it’s too late. It’s like scratching a scab, and the blood has already started to trickle.

  Tile is concentrating on the ball, and looks so innocent, so unscarred. He doesn’t have his mother, but it hasn’t really sunk in for him. He has dealt with it in a very literal and unemotional way. I feel a crushing in my heart knowing tha
t soon enough, he will really feel the weight of what happened and will have to carry it with him like I do, the heaviness of loss.

  “You know all those videos you took of Mom when Dad gave you the Flip video camera last year?”

  “Yeah, most of them are boring.”

  “Well, I tell you what, why don’t you upload them into my computer and I’ll make a little short film, to memorialize her.”

  His eyes light up and he stops bouncing the ball. “Can I choose the sound track?”

  I smile, thinking that Blink-182 is not exactly what I had in mind.

  “Sure.”

  He runs out to get his Flip video and returns in seconds. After we upload them, I tell him I need private time. He nods, but then walks up to me, cowering a little. He looks me in the eye and I turn away. It’s heartbreaking, how much I want to keep him safe from the world, and how hopeless a notion that is.

  “You know, maybe sometime you can have Oliver over. We can play Xbox. Even though I can go to level six on Tomb Raider I can let him win.”

  I try to will my eyes not to water.

  “Okay, Tile, sounds good.”

  Before he shuts the door, he turns around and says, “On second thought, you can pick the sound track. But I want my name in the credits.”

  CHAPTER 22

  SHOW-AND-TELL

  Before I hear the next message I decide to just concentrate on taking some decent pictures. The next day I bring my vintage camera to school, and people look at me strangely as I lug it through the hallway. The first thing I do is set it up in the girls’ bathroom. There are two barred windows above the sink where washed-out morning light bleeds in. When the Rachels come in for their pre-homeroom touch-up, even Rachel Two says the words “Hey, you.” I quickly realize that it’s merely because there’s a camera in the room. The first picture I take is the two Rachels from behind, standing underneath the window. Rachel One is admiring herself and Rachel Two is bent over to fix her tights. There are random objects on the sink, and the mirror is partly clouded up. I remember my father telling me that film is all about reflection. I wonder if this can be true with photography. I shoot.