Want Not

by Jonathan Miles

  When he figured the meat was done or maybe-done, Matty stacked it all—two steaks, three chops—onto one overloaded plate and hauled it to the table. The room was dark, cave-dark, but Matty didn’t care. He also didn’t care that the meat was overcooked to the point of petrification; whatever else the compactor had done, it’d squeezed the hunger right out of him. When sawing the meat proved impossible, he just ate it with his hands. Only once did he glance toward the living room, where Micah was deep into singing—her mouth open and head uptilted, looking like one of those caroling kids from the Charlie Brown Christmas special—and where Talmadge was staring at him with the saddest punished-puppy expression he could ever remember seeing on Tal’s face, maybe even worse than when Tal’s dad had called him to say he was ditching his mom and afterwards Tal had sat there stunned with a cold bong on his lap for like two hours. For a fleeting moment, barely the duration of a single manic guitar riff, their eyes locked—until, pricked by guilt, Matty dropped his gaze to his plate. The shame was narrow and precise: He felt guilty for how disgusted he was with Tal. He knew Tal was prone to being pussywhipped—he’d gone to a friggin John Mayer concert once, with what’s-her-name, that Memphis chick, who was hot but not that hot—but this, man, this was outer-limits whipped, this was like hibernating your nuts in a vat of liquid nitrogen, Matty just didn’t get this. He didn’t know what’d happened to his friend but he didn’t like it. When he’d chewed the steaks down, he went at the veal chops though he could feel his gut resisting—maybe because it was full, maybe because the spongy gray meat tasted vaguely acidic and had probably been dumped for good cause, despite what Micah said about the sham of “sell by” dates and all that shit. Still, he had a point to make. Not a point he could’ve put into words, but a point just the same. He chewed, he chewed, while the Russian jackhammers blasted out his inner ear, until all that remained on the plate were T-shaped veal bones and blubbery strips of gristle and one of Micah’s handmade napkins sopping up the scant juice. He glanced toward the living room, to be sure his victory had been witnessed and his whatever-it-was point had been made, but was disappointed to find it abandoned. He shut off the music, lit a cigarette, and decided he’d had enough.

  Before eight the next morning he was already up and gone, and by nine he was inside the dumpster of that Henry Street nursing home, where Talmadge had fished out the sack of rice. But Matty wasn’t looking for food. “Paper,” he remembered saying. “All I see is fucking paper.” For an hour he combed the dumpster, tearing open giant clear bags that were filled with smaller clear bags and sifting through the paper he found, ripping open envelopes, scanning page after page, all the while stuffing his backpack. He would’ve stayed longer had not a huge black orderly come upon him saying The hell you doin, forcing him out of the dumpster and saying Gwine outta here in response to Matty’s ardent-sounding condemnation of “food waste.”

  Out on the street he dialed the number he had for Gleb’s girlfriend in Seattle, which Gleb had told him was the best way to contact him. He didn’t know the girlfriend’s name—if Gleb had ever spoken it, he’d forgotten—but he did know, courtesy of photographs that Gleb kept under his mattress and didn’t mind sharing, that one of her asscheeks was adorned with a snake tattoo and she smoked cigarettes while giving head. She was so warm and chipper on the phone that Matty almost felt guilty for knowing this. She told him Gleb had scored an iPhone in prison, sounding inordinately proud, like a wife noting her husband’s promotion down at the plant. (He’d bought it from a guard, she said, which made Matty smile, knowing precisely which guard.) Matty texted Gleb: cellie, wats ^? yr k9 nEdz hlp. bac east, got idea. cll l8r? Half an hour later, Matty’s phone rang. After explaining his idea, he listened for a long and serious while, nodding, frowning, saying rad, okay, thanks, and scrawling several numbers on his dirty palm with a perfectly good ballpoint pen someone had abandoned in the trash.

  7

  THE FIRST ITEM ALEXIS thought to add to her red plastic basket was shampoo, because everyone’s hair gets dirty, meaning everyone needs shampoo, and therefore no one could draw any conclusions or for that matter think anything at all about a bottle of shampoo. Not her regular brand, however (she was fond of Tea Tree Special from Paul Mitchell, it had this weird-cool Altoid-y tingle to it and it wasn’t tested on animals). She needed some other brand, one that couldn’t be tied to her, didn’t represent her. As she stood midway in the aisle at the CVS, adhered to the carpet by indecision, her ears picked up two competing frequencies: a piped-in Taylor Swift song, which sounded to her the way Bubble Yum tastes after it’s been chewed for half an hour, and the magnetic buzz of the fluorescent lights above her, which was more than merely sonic. She could feel the buzz as well, as if she was caught in some force field or X-ray machine; she felt radioactive, and possibly a little nauseated, as she stood scanning the six stories of shelves for a brand of shampoo that meant nothing, said nothing, that was alien to her but unremarkable to anyone else. The shampoo, like the rest of the drugstore miscellany she was here to gather, was not the primary object of her shopping, but rather a buffer: a means of obscuring or at least diluting the truth of her mission.

  She reached out a hand, then retracted it. Not Herbal Essences, no—that’s the one Leighton Meester from Gossip Girl was modeling for, and Alexis hated that show, it was totally stupid. And not Kiss My Face shampoo, because she didn’t want anyone to look at her face much less consider kissing it, and not Suave because that was sort of Walmart-ish, and definitely definitely not Pantene Pro-V because that’s what her mom used. After a while her eyes came to rest upon a lonesome-looking bottle of Pert on the second shelf from the bottom, and her gaze lingered there, inscrutably, until with a prick of memory she made the connection: That’d been her dad’s brand. She remembered that stout green bottle from her early childhood, perched high up in the shower caddy where her dad’s razors and shaving gel used to live before he’d died and Aunt Liz had come in and scrubbed the house clean of his memory, just Lysol’d away every trace of him. Wanting to prolong and intensify the sentimental association she was feeling, she picked the bottle off the shelf and held it in one hand, lightly rubbing the label with her thumb. Her dad had always smelled so good, half-waking her up to plant a goodbye kiss on her cheek before heading off to catch the train to the city in the early early morning, the sudden blast of his cologne like a warm and welcome ray of sunlight alighting upon her face, his freshly-shaven-yet-still-scratchy cheek nuzzling hers, and God that’d always felt so . . . so good, him whispering Bye bye sweetness and her smiling drowsily without opening her eyes, savoring the kiss and her awareness that she had another hour and a half to burrow beneath her Powerpuff Girls comforter until her mom would come in barking, “Schooltime, Alexis, up and at ’em . . .” or some other dumb wake-up shit.

  She startled. From around the corner a blue-shirted stockboy had emerged, pushing a flat cart loaded with cardboard boxes. He had bumpy pink skin and a high bony forehead but was mildly cute anyway, in an indie Brooklyn kind of way. He glanced at her, then immediately dropped his eyes as he rolled the cart toward her—forcing her, by not merely his presence but also his age and gender and semi-cuteness, to make her shampoo choice. The Pert, fine, whatever: She dropped the bottle into her basket with an affected nonchalance, even drawing a finger to her lips to suggest a half-remembered mental shopping list, then evacuated the aisle before the stockboy could put two and two together to figure out the monumentally fucked-up reason she was loading up a basket at a CVS store to which she’d driven 12.9 miles and 24 minutes, passing three other drugstores on the way. Rounding the corner, toward—where? the moisturizer aisle, okay—she felt certain that his eyes were trained on her back, that she’d roused suspicion, and her nausea doubled.

  A bottle of Neutrogena. That’d do. She roamed the store, drawn to unpeopled aisles. In the makeup aisle she added Great Lash mascara (Blackest Black, straight-brush) even though she’d switched to Voluminous a year ago because Great Lash sme
ared. Then cottonballs. Sea Breeze astringent. Maybe a magazine? No, the checkout people sometimes paused with those, or made some comment about the celeb on the cover: Is Kate still dating A-Rod? I don’t know why people say Jessica Simpson’s so fat. I saw that new Twilight movie, did you, ohmygod it sucked. Stiffening herself, she drifted toward the healthcare aisles on the other side of the store, furtively noting the circular green signs (Wound Care, Warts & Lice) while making sure her eyes didn’t catch those of the Indian-lady pharmacist surveying the store from a counter in the rear. Pain & Sleep, Eye Care. Allergy & Asthma. Laxatives, across from—there it was, oh God, Family Planning.

  But she couldn’t go there yet. Jesus. She added a jar of Tylenol to her basket, thinking she might actually need that. She felt the fluorescent buzz heightening, as if the light-tubes were straining under some gaseous pressure and would soon explode, one after the other, showering hot yellow sparks onto the floor and maybe easing this whole situation by killing her. Just . . . killing her. So that her mom could erase her memory, too, and so everyone could go on with their lives without stupid fucking stupid Alexis dragging them down. She heard a telephone ring, watched the pharmacist lady take the call then disappear behind some shelves stocked with fat white pill bottles. With a deep and resolute inhalation, Alexis made her move.

  For the very briefest of moments, she skimmed the throng of products on the shelves, feeling assaulted by the profusion, all those brand names (First Response; Answer; Clearblue; E.P.T.) leaping at her, shouting Pick me in voices so blaringly strident she felt sure the whole store could hear. She couldn’t do it. Panicking, she spun around, and found herself staring squarely at a shelf of enemas which immediately brought to mind her sorta-kinda best friend Gus, and which, under any other circumstances, would’ve caused her to laugh aloud. (“Sorta-kinda” best friend because ever since eighth grade they’d maintained a cycle of falling out with each other then reuniting then falling out again.) As a sophomore, Gus had pioneered the use of vodka enemas which he claimed got you drunk immediately and couldn’t be detected by a Breathalyzer or by his mom’s regular demands to smell his breath when he’d roll in on the weekends. Gus was big on shocking people—he sometimes wore flowery vintage dresses to school, played bass in an otherwise all-girl Lo-Fi Goth band called the Date Rapes, faked epileptic seizures when he was bored in class—but broadcasting his use of alcohol enemas had been, as even he admitted, an error: his fame had gotten so out-of-control that even incoming freshmen knew him for his enemas, and he couldn’t go to the bathroom at a party without someone breaking in with a cellphone camera, hoping to catch him in the act, even though he’d abandoned the practice after about half a dozen woozy times. That fame was yet another reason Gus couldn’t wait to get to New York City, where he’d been accepted to the Fashion Institute of Technology and was planning a triple career as a musician, reality-TV star, and designer of punk-inspired clothing he intended to market worldwide under the “Gussy” label. He was as dead set on her going to Richard Varick College as she was, to study finance like her dad had done. Gus said she could manage all the numbers for Gussy, be his chief operating officer (“I’ll be your boo, you’ll be my coo”), which despite her smiling assent was not in her planbook. She saw Goldman Sachs on the menu. Had, anyway. Now this. Now the maybe-this. God, she wished Gus was here right now, ordering her to chill, promising her it’d all be okay. But this—this was too fucked-up, even for Gus.

  Noting the pharmacist’s return, she plucked a box of laxatives from the shelf above the enemas—Dulcolax, her regular brand—and stood there awhile, reading the text on the package. Active ingredient: Bisacodyl USP. How could this be happening to her? Also contains: Hydrogenated vegetable oil. Who could she possibly tell about this? Do not use when abdominal pain, nausea, or vomiting are present unless directed by a physician. No one, that’s who. No one and never. The pharmacist stood up again, toting a clipboard back behind the pill shelves, and Alexis swung around.

  Why were there so many brands, and could it possibly matter? Early result. New! One step. Digital. Color sure tip. Over 99% accurate. Deluged by the choices, she went with an established tack inherited from her mother: She picked the most expensive one, burying it beneath the shampoo and cottonballs and mascara and moisturizer and Sea Breeze as she strode from the aisle. If she was expecting any relief from having done it, from having grabbed the test without anyone seeing her or confronting her or asking her if there was anything she needed to talk about, none came. Instead, she felt truly radioactive now, as if her basket was glowing, pulsing, smoldering, leaving a trail of glo-green drips behind her. En route to the front of the store she added a jumbo bag of Doritos, jamming it into the basket as if to smother the radiation. She felt tears forming just below her eyeballs, felt her cheeks scalding, and was struck with the new fear that she might faint.

  At the registers things only got worse. The schlubby, mustachioed cashier she’d spotted upon entering had been replaced by a blonde girl just a few years older than Alexis. The girl had stringy yellow hair and puffy eyes and was apparently new at the job because she was having trouble scanning a sack of Cat Chow that an elderly woman was trying to buy. Alexis focused on the cover of the Cosmopolitan perched beside the register: Wicked Things Other Women Do in Bed (Our Naughtiest Sex Poll!), read one coverline. Are you a Bitch? The old woman was digging through her purse for her CVS card while the cashier chewed gum. The One Time to Tell Him “I Love You.” Alexis noticed she was shaking—uncontrollably, visibly—and pinched her forearm, as hard as she could, to distract her physical self—so hard she could feel herself bruising.

  And then the cashier said, “Next.” Afraid to look down at her basket, and determined to avoid eye contact, Alexis focused on the cigarettes arrayed behind the counter and counted to ten and then back down again while the cashier emptied the basket. She heard the crinkle of the Doritos, the swish of the cottonballs being scanned, flinching at every beep of the scanner. Would the beep be different, like the double-beep that sounded when you bought beer or cigarettes? “No,” she mumbled, when the cashier asked if she had a CVS card. As she was signing her name with the digital marker, for a credit purchase, she caught sight of the cashier loading the test into a white plastic bag, causing her signing hand to collapse and her last name to go dribbling below the signature line.

  “Have a nice day,” the cashier said, and though Alexis tried avoiding her eyes, she failed. The cashier knew. Of course she knew. Alexis saw it in those puffy gray eyes, the downturned mouth, the way she’d stopped chewing her gum to stare at her, and with a sudden spasm of horror Alexis realized why: She was crying. She’d broken. Exposed, she looked straight at the cashier as if to plead for mercy or guidance or understanding or maybe shock or horror or disgust, aware of how wet her cheeks had gotten and what a sorry, mangled sight she must be, but the cashier just resumed her gum-chewing and said, “Next.”

  Alexis grabbed the two bags and fled: through the twin sets of automatic doors, and out onto the white-bright sidewalk beside a red-topped trash can. A sob came up, wrenching her body the way vomiting does, and she grasped the trash can to steady herself. This is not happening to me, she said to herself. Gleams of sunlight bounced off the cars in the parking lot. This is not happening to me, she told herself again. And then, as if to prove it, she pushed one of the bags into the trash can, and feeling a strange and welcome release, pushed the other one in too. Yet again she said to herself, This is not happening to me, and took two steps backwards, wiping her cheeks with her forearm, feeling her balance returning as she put several yards of concrete between the trash can and herself, as if she’d somehow purged herself of this toxin, and was free, free. More coolly this time, she repeated it to herself, This is not happening to me, and with one last glance at the trash can turned toward her car.

  Part Three

  1

  THE NURSES WERE ALWAYS telling Dr. Elwin Cross Sr. that he should lie down. That all this shuffling and reshuffling o
f papers he did, all this frantic hopping from one book to another and constant realigning of pencils and pens and notebooks and notecards, did nothing but frustrate him—“stress” him, they said—to the brink of combustion. “Why don’t you take a break?” they’d say, in that artificially chipper tone endemic to kindergarten teachers and restaurant hostesses, sometimes adding, “Nothing like a good long nap on a (rainy, sunny, winter, summer) afternoon . . .” When he’d resist this suggestion, as he always did, they’d point to his scarred and allegedly frail heart, sighing and frowning in what seemed to Dr. Cross the way a friend might note the wife and children of a man embarking upon an affair or some other reckless action—as though his sole duty in these swift and narrowing years was to coddle this one organ, to pledge above all else his custodial fealty to his over-monitored reptilian core.