I closed down Izzy. Got dressed and went to the grocery store.
While the ziti was cooling, I showered. Put some product in my hair, attempted to blow it dry, gave up and put it back in a bun with a backup headband. I put on my swishy blue skirt and the retro red shoes that made my legs look miles long. I wore my favorite pink v-neck shirt that those two people on What Not To Wear said would make me look thinner. I put on some mascara, a little lip gloss, and decided I looked pretty good.
Great, even. For me.
I wrapped the ziti in a dish towel so I wouldn’t burn my hands and grabbed the six pack of some microbrew I’d never heard of and locked my apartment.
Outside, it was a purple twilight. The fog had burned off and the sunset was lighting up the sky in pink and orange. Pantone colors 213U and 021U.
The planes were overhead. But the planes were always overhead. It was why there was a vacancy and the rent was so cheap.
There were two women sitting in the lawn chairs by the empty pool, drinking what looked like juice glasses of red wine, and I realized it was Friday night. They were pretty, those women. One was white with red hair, the other was black, her hair in intricate braids. Both wore jeans with strategic holes in the knees and upper thighs and cute little sweaters to combat the chill of the early October evening. They looked like they might be my age—twenty-ish. Two twenty-ish-year-old women having a ladies’ night by an empty pool.
It was the kind of thing that should be commonplace in my life, but somehow it was completely foreign.
They lifted their hands to me and it seemed like they might invite me over, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe with panic. Panic and a kind of wish. A wish that they would. A wish that I was the kind of person to accept if they did. But in the end they didn’t, we just exchanged waves and I was left a little empty.
I took the two-step journey over to Jesse’s door, feeling at once like I was about to have a moment that might change my life and a little like I might throw up in my mouth.
You can always hide your horn-dog motives behind being neighborly, I told myself and took some comfort in that.
I knocked on his door, but there was no answer. I knocked again, aware of those women behind me, undoubtedly watching.
Probably judging.
Maybe even laughing.
“Word to the wise,” one of them yelled and I turned. Yep. They were laughing. “Stay away from 1A.”
“I’m not…there’s nothing—”
“Oh, he’s fucking hot,” the other girl said like I hadn’t opened my mouth. “But he’s bad news.”
“Total asshole,” the other woman agreed.
“We’re just neighbors,” I yelled with an inane laugh, and turned back to the door just as it opened and Jesse was standing there.
With his shirt off.
“What are you doing?” he asked. His eyes were definitely not sort of smiling now. They were hard and cold and I realized with a start that this was a mistake. A big mistake.
I went hard into bumbling mode.
“I just… this is… thank you. For fixing my stuff and…everything.”
“What is it?” He tilted sideways like he was looking through my glass baking dish.
“Baked ziti and…here…beer.” I held both out to him like I was carrying a dead cat. Like I’d been forced to do this. Like there was nothing more awful than bringing him food.
“I don’t want that stuff.”
“What?”
“I didn’t ask for that stuff.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why it’s a gift.”
“I don’t need any fucking gifts.”
Oh my god. This is so bad.
“Wow…okay.” I was shocked speechless at his rudeness. He put his hands up on the top of the doorframe and leaned out toward me, every muscle in his body popping out in relief.
“I don’t want that food, but that other thing you’re here for. We could do that.”
“Other thing…?” I was short-circuiting.
“Yeah.”
“What—”
“Fucking. Right? That’s why you’re really here. To get fucked.”
Oh my god. This was out of control. I practically incinerated on the spot.
“I don’t…no…that’s not—”
I mean it was, but I expected it to come after some conversation. A beer. Some smiling eyes. Not like this, with those women behind me and his cold expression in front of me.
“Bullshit,” he said like I had disappointed him. “Take your food and get lost.”
He shut the door in my face, and before I could move he opened his door again, grabbed one beer from the six pack I’d brought, and shut the door.
My blood was boiling. Literally boiling. While at the same time my skin was ice cold, frozen with a mortification so profound I couldn’t think. Or breathe.
Leave, I told myself, my brain sending panicked and hurt messages to my body. Move!
On wooden legs I turned to back to my apartment.
“Don’t take it personally,” shouted my audience. “He’s like that with everyone.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even acknowledge them. I went right back into my apartment and threw the ziti away. The beer I kept, planning on drinking all of it tonight.
I sat at my computer, because it was the only place I had to sit, and wished that my sister had not fallen in love and fucked up my life. But more than that, I wished she was here. I wished my sister was in the city and I could call her and tell her what just happened.
Because it hurt. It really hurt.
I opened up that friend request, hit accept and typed:
I need you…
I sat there waiting for a few hours, but my message went unanswered.
Chapter Five
Charlotte
Abby was born first. She was blue and small, her lungs underdeveloped. Immediately she was put in the care of a nurse. And the nurse had to put her in an incubator, where she stayed for three weeks.
I came out two minutes later. Pink and, while not fat, at least a better weight. I screamed and screamed and didn’t stop until Mom had me at her breast.
“She’s a hungry one,” the doctor said, and that was pretty much when the jokes started.
That I, while in Mom’s tummy, ate all the food. Leaving poor Abby to shrivel and wither and not develop her lungs. The jokes were so upsetting that at one point I went online and found all the information I could about how twins develop in the womb, but no one was much interested in it.
The jokes were so damn funny, who cared about biology?
But between my sister and I there was a different dynamic. She didn’t laugh at the jokes, or tell them, and in thanks, I took care of her. I carried her extra inhaler and her EpiPen for a nut allergy she outgrew. I explained very carefully to all of our friends’ parents that we couldn’t come inside if there was a cat or a dog in the house. And even though I didn’t have the allergy, if there was a cat and all its dander in our friend’s house, I walked home with Abby.
I helped her at school. And Abby needed a lot of help. Or at least was very good at pretending she did.
I heard Mom one day telling her friends that sometimes she thought I was a much better mommy to Abby than she herself was. And I’d been fucking flush with pride. It was like she’d said the nicest thing in the world to me.
And then, as Abby got older and outgrew the inhalers and the braces and the allergies and instead started to grow into a kind of reckless wild boy-crazy walking hormone, I continued to try and mother her.
She called me—repeatedly—a drag. And that was exactly right.
I used all my weight to steady her. To counterbalance her whirlwind. I was hanging off of her, trying to slow her progress into the stratosphere.
That’s who I’d become. And that’s who I stayed.
A drag.
But without her in my life to lift me up, the only person I dragged down was myself.
Ove
r the course of the next week, I licked my wounds by doing some of my best illustrations, my most clever lettering.
By never leaving my house.
I reminded myself that this was how I lived best. This was my happy place.
A little bit here, sure. In the world with the people I didn’t like and who didn’t know me.
But mostly I lived in my head. In my own world.
Working. Always working.
I was finishing up the last of the Newgate Prison pages by taking some liberties with the galleries, opening up a few of the cells in order to show how the female prisoners lived. The rank and foul and unfair conditions they had to survive.
Very chilling, if I did say so myself.
Yesterday sometime? Last night, maybe—I couldn’t be sure when I was in this mode, time kind of became irrelevant—anyway, at some point I had scanned the illustrations and was tweaking the layout on my monitor when there popped a big red alert box on my screen, sent from my calendar program.
It’s the last Saturday night of the month. You Know What That Means!
I clicked ignore, knowing even as I did it, it was futile. Five minutes later there was another one.
STOP! NOW! TAKE A SHOWER! PUT ON REAL CLOTHES!
I cursed my past self and this clever idea I had three months ago. There was no ignoring this anymore. My computer would start to shut down in ten minutes, so I saved all my files and shut everything down myself.
The last window I closed was the Facebook messenger.
Abby never responded.
And I’d convinced myself that the Cheetara thing must have been some kind of spammy prank. My sister would have responded by now. Abby did not have the impulse control NOT to respond.
With my computer off I had nothing to do but get ready for Torture Night. Or, as the rest of the world called it: A Pleasant Night Out With Friends.
Yes, I do have friends…well, acquaintances, really. A bunch of other illustrator/designers who got together once a month to commiserate and—in my case—practice rusty people skills.
I could tell myself some big story about how it was good to network and see what other people were working on and talk about the industry, but the truth was it forced me to put on slightly uncomfortable clothes and even more uncomfortable shoes and make conversation.
And as much as I might hate getting ready for it, I was always happy I went. If for no other reason than I left feeling like my work was always the most interesting work.
I’d rather work on Where’s Jane Austen than winery labels for pinot noir. Or packaging for organic raw dog food.
And I needed to not feel the lingering burn of Jesse. In fact, I needed to clean Jesse out of my head. Two weeks in this place, and it felt like I was infested with him. Aware of him on the other side of my wall all the time.
So I put on my skinny jeans and my high-heel silver booties, that my sister made me buy a year ago, and a glittery tank top that covered up my belly and a fake leather jacket, and I let my hair down around my shoulders, in a big wild mess of curls.
And I painted my lips bright red. So you couldn’t miss them.
You couldn’t miss me.
And I felt good.
Really good.
Sexy even.
I stepped outside and turned to lock my door. Of course, because the world was cruel and ironic, Jesse, wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, was just walking into his apartment.
I kept my head down, my cheeks hot, and locked my door like he wasn’t there. Grateful that my hair down around my face was such an effective curtain.
“Fuck. Charlotte?” he asked, and like I was a woman playing the part of a diva in one of those kinds of movies I flipped my hair (which was no easy feat) and walked away, strutting as best I could. Feeling his gaze on my ass the whole way.
Jesse
The fight was tonight. Everything was set up and for some reason, as I paced my apartment waiting for David to show up and tape my hands, all I could think about was Charlotte.
Not her ass in those jeans, which…I mean, fuck.
And her hair, the spiral curl cloud of it. And her lips, red like a warning flag.
No, I wasn’t thinking of those things.
Instead I was obsessing on the too-short distance between her door and the door to the basement. The entrance to the fights was through the parking garage behind the apartment complex, and that door into Shady Oaks was locked, but if someone came up those stairs, they could unlock the door and be at Charlotte’s door in two steps.
And the kinds of people that would go up those stairs from the fight…they didn’t belong anywhere near Charlotte’s door. Including me.
Especially me.
I grabbed my cell phone and called Nick. Not the woman who ran shit around here, but Nick who was one of the Downey boys. The Downey boys had their thumbs in all sorts of pies. Legal and not so legal. But Nick didn’t quite fit the Downey brother mold.
He was a good guy. As far as good guys went in Shady Oaks.
“Hey Nick,” I said when he answered.
“Who is this?” he asked, because my number had undoubtedly come up unknown caller.
“Jesse.”
“Hey, man,” he said. “Heard you got an event in the basement tonight.”
“Full ticket. Should be good.”
Good being an understatement.
“I’m wondering,” I said, “if you might be looking for a little work.”
“I told you, I’m not interested in fighting.”
“Yeah, I know.” Such a goddamn waste of a man built like a beast. “This is just a little security at the top of the stairs coming up into Shady Oaks.”
“Outside your apartment? You’ve never had security there before.”
“I haven’t, but this new girl moved in. And if something happened, some drunk guy goes out the wrong door, she’s the type to call the cops.” Which wasn’t a lie, but wasn’t the reason why I wanted someone outside her door. “You know how this crowd gets.”
Bloodlust being an understatement.
“It’s two hours of work,” I said. “And a good cause.”
Nick laughed. “Good cause. Right.”
He gave me his price, which I agreed to, and I gave him the time.
“Hey,” he said just as we were about to hang up. “I know you and your brother don’t talk. But he’s sent out word that there’s a girl he’s looking for…”
“What else is new? Look, man, I don’t give a shit about my brother’s love life.”
“Well, he says the girl he’s looking for moved into Shady Oaks.”
I rocked back on my heels. The fuck?
“It’s not my neighbor,” I said. “She’s not the kind of woman Jack pays attention to.”
The idea of Jack and Charlotte in the same room together was, frankly, funny. Charlotte would fall over herself and Jack would…well, he’d eat her alive.
“Yeah, just thought you might want to know.”
I liked Nick. So I just barely managed to swallow my “fuck you, asshole, you have no idea what I want to know.”
We hung up, and Dave arrived to tape me up, and I pushed Charlotte from my mind.
It was time to go to work.
Charlotte
All the designers met at one of the tapas places down in SoMa. Stephanie picked. Stephanie always picked. The rest of us introverts let Stephanie boss us around like it was her job, and I wasn’t sure about everyone else, but I was alright with it.
It was enough just to be out in the world like this. The air smelled good down here, full of people and coffee and garlic. I liked the way my heels hit the sidewalk, and when I walked into the tapas place and was led by the hostess back to the table I liked how everyone stopped mid-conversation to say hello to me.
Like I was the thing they’d been waiting for. A missing part to a puzzle.
“Hey guys,” I said, lifting my hand in an awkward wave. I liked the attention, I just didn’t know wha
t to do with it.
“Have a seat!” Stephanie said, pointing me toward the empty eat at the end of the table. Right next to Simon, a fairly new guy to the group.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with your hair down,” he said, after I sat down next to him.
“I don’t usually,” I said, abundantly aware of its size. My hair could, in some instances, be the biggest thing around for a city block. “It’s kind of obscene.”
“It’s kind of amazing.”
Well, that was charmingly done. And he looked sharp in his dark-rimmed glasses and fledgling beard.
Simon’s elbow brushed mine and I felt it down my back.
Well, well, I thought. Look at me now.
I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu that wasn’t nuts, and took a glass of wine from the bottle Simon ordered.
“Hey,” he murmured as Stephanie started a conversation with Janice and Phil at the other end of the table. “I don’t want this to be awkward,” he said. “But Stephanie told me about your folks.”
For a second I couldn’t remember what I’d told Stephanie about my parents. But then I remembered how she had called during the first manic twelve hours after my sister told me the trouble she was in.
I turned my head so fast, my hair practically smacked him in the face.
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s all right,” he said with a gracious smile, straightening his glasses. “But I just wanted to say, I had to do the same thing a few years back. Dad had to go in for cancer treatment and insurance didn’t cover it, so I sold my condo and moved into an apartment in Oakland. Gave them the money.”
“Yeah,” I said, lying through my teeth. The lie actually easier the more I told it. “It was a car accident. Both of them were in the car. They’re fine, but it’s lots of rehab. Insurance didn’t cover it.”
“That’s tough. Where did you end up moving?”
“South San Fransisco, by the airport.” His eyes widened and I shrugged. “Rent’s cheap.”
“Here’s to cheap rent,” he said and tipped his glass to mine. The crystal rang out with a cheerful sound. Convivial. Two people who understood a difficult truth sitting around a table of people who didn’t.
Bad Neighbor Page 4