Why We Came to the City

by Kristopher Jansma

  Grace, Irene had always believed, was a double-edged blade to be kept laced at her hip at all times. To appear unperturbed by all that was perturbing you eased both your own mind and the minds of those around you. So she wished to appear the cool lieutenant, marshaling the harried hospital staff as they hammered keyboard keys and strategized the times and locations for her first two chemotherapy appointments. This worked, until she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glasses of one of the old ladies behind the counter and was thrown by how stretched and blurry she appeared: precisely the way she felt.

  The woman’s great gray head swayed from side to side and her tongue clucked behind fuchsia-painted lips.

  “Oh dear,” they all seemed fond of saying, as they reached for their telephones, “let me just call someone and see about this.”

  The problem was the question marks. Irene was full of them. Allergic reactions to medications: ? Name of previous primary care physician: ? List previous hospital visits, in order, and by purpose: 1. Tonsils removed, 1992 or 1991? 2. Fell down and hit head on a brass Dalmatian statue. I was 5 or 6? No concussion. 3. Horrible stomachaches, turned out to be lactose intolerance, which went away suddenly. Not sure when. Immunizations and vaccinations: Probably all the standard ones for kids? Nothing after 1998. Father’s medical history: Male-pattern baldness, rosacea, near-sighted, ??? Mother’s medical history: ???

  “I have primary bone cancer.” She tried to get used to the way these words felt on her tongue, and she’d point to the small lump below her left eye socket. “I have a malignant osteosarcoma.” It wasn’t at all noticeable until you noticed it.

  The day passed in excruciating baby steps. By the time darkness fell, Irene had visited practically every floor in the hospital, never once escaping the sight of glittering snowflakes.

  Finally cleared to begin her first two-day chemo dose the following morning, Irene walked across the dark street and broke down crying in the back corner of a MetroStop Bakery over a bowl of scalded corn chowder. None of the servers seemed to find this odd. She looked down at the mascara smudges she’d left on the edge of the paper tablecloth. She’d expected to get a bit farther than this. She hadn’t even seen a single needle, scalpel, or IV! To quiver in the face of medieval instruments seemed reasonable; to be undone by grainy Xeroxes did not. At eight a.m., she was to report to the twelfth floor for chemotherapy, which would take a few hours to be infused through a vein in her arm.

  Irene waited for the mascara stains to dry a little. Then she carefully tore a perimeter of paper around them and slipped the scrap into her purse, not yet sure how or if she’d use it in some new piece she’d been constructing late at night in her apartment.

  While her fingers were in her purse, they pulled out her phone, even as she forbade them to do it. Everyone’s gone for the holidays, she reminded them. Still, they thumbed through her contacts. Sara was at George’s parents’ place in Ohio for Christmas. Jacob was in Tampa, or as he called it, “the land of decrepitude,” with his mother and father for the final few days of Hanukah. She hadn’t wanted to ruin anyone’s holidays, so she hadn’t told any of them about her diagnosis yet.

  The only person who knew was William Cho. Irene studied his picture. Her phone had downloaded it on its own, from where she didn’t know. Dressed in a black suit and black tie, William looked somewhat startled against a blue Sears background. She wished she knew how to change it; this puzzled man was nothing like the delicate and curious boy she’d spent the night with a few days ago. The more she looked at this un-William, the more she wanted to see the real one again. She had bought him that Dylan scarf, but it was still back in her apartment. They hadn’t spoken since the last time she’d sat in this same café right after the diagnosis.

  He would probably still be in the city; his parents lived in Queens. She tapped the star key every so often to keep the screen from going dark and taking him away.

  • • •

  867 Video was dead, and from the owner’s stares, William got the distinct impression that he was the sole reason the store hadn’t closed up yet. Perhaps William was keeping it open in a larger sense as well, for the trend among his coworkers was to have DVDs—no, Blu-rays now—conveniently delivered to their doors, or better yet, streamed to their TVs. “How do you have time to go to a store?” they asked him at work, when they saw his rentals sitting on his desk waiting to be brought back. “Didn’t they all close?”

  But William had nothing but time to go to the store, even so close to Christmas. Especially now, as his office was closed. He loved stores because he never knew what he wanted. He had to touch everything until his fingers selected the right one, generally without his permission. He was doing just this when his phone rang.

  The owner, Arturo, whose left eye was lifeless and listing, called out to William as he set down the copy of Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion so he could answer the call.

  “Forty-nine cents I got that for! Not a scratch on the disc! Stupid teenagers that ran the Blockbuster on Seventy-eighth Street didn’t even know who Cary Grant was. I told them, ‘This is an American god, you cretins! This man could act circles around your Bin Diesel, your Channing Tater, your Catrina Gomez!’”

  Expecting a call from his mother, William answered the phone without glancing at the screen.

  “Annyeonghaseyo, eomeoni.”

  “William? Is that you?”

  At the sound of Irene’s voice, he gripped the rack of classics unsteadily.

  “William,” she continued cheerfully. “Sorry to bother you. I’m sure you must be busy right now, but I was hoping I could ask you a favor.”

  “No,” he said quickly. “I mean, no, it isn’t any bother. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m feeling fine. No change. But it’s my building. Practically in the middle of the night, the super came around just now to tell us we have to evacuate because of some kind of infestation. Pill flies or sharp beetles or something like that. Thank god it’s not bedbugs, but anyways, I just ran out—stupid me—without packing a thing, and I’m terrified to go back. Everyone’s out of town, and I need a place to sleep if it’s not too much to ask. Just on the couch or somewhere, I’m not picky. I don’t want you to think I have the wrong idea—”

  Wrong idea? William wanted to ask. Which idea was wrong, exactly? The idea of them sleeping together again? Or the equally ineradicable idea that they were nothing more than two more people who ought never to have slept together in the first place? He kept his mouth shut, which was about all he trusted himself to do.

  “I know that things have been—well, I don’t know what they’ve been. Sorry for babbling on like this. I know it’s—shit.”

  “No,” William blurted. He instantly wished he’d just let her keep going; he wanted nothing more than her babbling on and on. But now she’d fallen silent and clearly expected him to say something. Panicked, he stared down at Cary Grant on the Suspicion DVD cover. Each time they kissed, the tagline read, there was the thrill of love . . . The threat of murder! Cary Grant’s lowered eyebrows bespoke a smoothness that William wished he possessed.

  “Good,” he said, trying to sound Grant-like, “I’ll let the doorman know you’re coming.”

  “William, you’re the best,” she sighed.

  “Don’t mention it,” he said, lifting the DVD.

  Irene sighed happily and ended the call.

  William texted his address to her phone and then rushed over to Arturo with the DVD in hand, hoping that if he hurried, he might be able to study a scene or two before Irene buzzed up.

  “One of Hitchcock’s best,” Arturo said, looking adoringly down at Joan Fontaine in her low-cut red dress. “Except for the ending, which RKO made him change—”

  But William could hardly hear him. He paid and left the store, thinking at first he’d buy some of the Bollinger Blanc she’d liked last time—or get a bouquet of roses that h
e could throw into a vase, only he didn’t think he owned a vase—and moreover, this wasn’t what Cary Grant would do, he was fairly certain. Cary Grant would never be so presumptuous. She said she didn’t want him to think she had the wrong idea. Whatever else, that probably meant he ought to play it cool. Cool like Cary Grant.

  William left the video store feeling stone-jawed. This lasted two thirds of his way home, when he slipped on a patch of ice and slid into the branches of one of those Christmas trees out for sale on the sidewalk.

  • • •

  Irene went over immediately. She’d thought about going back to her place for his scarf, but she didn’t want to waste time and risk him losing interest. William greeted her at the door and said he had just been watching an old movie and asked how she was feeling. But she cut him off—she didn’t want to talk about that. She instead gushed that she loved old movies and that she would have to insist they watch the rest together. She hated to interrupt when he was being so generous. But after an hour passed, sitting there on the couch watching Grant and Fontaine flirting, Irene found it difficult to focus.

  William’s apartment distressed her. More and more, Irene felt as if she were watching the movie from the set of another movie. Not only was his place achingly coordinated in maroons and teals and mahogany leather, but it was filled with showroom-style homey touches. On one wall above a sideboard hung a gigantic bronze architect’s compass, surrounded by framed black-and-white photos: a medieval cathedral apse, a Roman atrium, the gable of a seaside cottage. She was positive these were not vacation photos but the kind of black-and-white “art” pictures that you could get twelve for ten at IKEA. She was grateful that he didn’t have a single Christmas decoration up, but she’d have preferred an evergreen to the inexplicable basket of neatly arranged branches that sat in the corner. It was like something you saw in a magazine, not anything that a real person owned. Steadily, she became convinced that she was sitting in the completely fabricated living room of a completely fabricated person.

  Irene excused herself to use the restroom, and William paused the movie. On the way down the hall she looked for evidence of a personality, photographs of friends or kitschy mementos, but she found nothing. William’s family was Korean, yet she couldn’t spot a single piece of art with any Asian influence whatsoever. She knew that he had studied classics in college, but the only Greek object she saw was a small urn, filled not with significant ashes but with potpourri that didn’t smell of anything anymore. What sort of self-respecting bachelor owned potpourri? In the bathroom Irene found a mirror whose frame was strategically flaked of its paint, and a little soap dispenser adorned with tiny, irregular mosaic tiles, as if some artisan a millennium ago had carefully glued them onto a Crate & Barrel sanitizer pump. On the way back to the couch, she checked his bookshelf to be sure the spines had been cracked. She was relieved to find that, at least, William wasn’t the full Gatsby.

  It didn’t help that he himself was speaking like a movie character. “Could I pour you another glass of wine?” he asked when she got back. Once he did, he looked up as if he’d just surprised himself with the thought and said, “Pass me the clicker, if it’s not too much trouble. The sound is a little dim, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You smell like pinesap,” Irene said as she passed him the clicker.

  “Ah, yes. I had a run-in with a tree salesman out on the street. Nice fellow, though he shouted a bit when I ran off.”

  “Are you being British?” she asked.

  That seemed to catch him somewhat, and his cheeks reddened in the way that she remembered. “Not intentionally, no. I suppose I should take that as a compliment.”

  “Should you?” Irene asked under a sigh.

  William didn’t hear, now the volume was up.

  When the movie was over, Irene was tired but too uncomfortable to sleep. She didn’t want to stay in the false-living room. Nor did she want to go to bed with this false-William.

  “I think maybe I should go,” she said finally.

  William looked sad. “Oh! Well. All right then. Wait here. I’ll call for a car.”

  “The city’s full of cabs, William,” she said. “Cabs and sidewalks and trains. Christ, what I wouldn’t give to be on a train right now.”

  “Sorry if you didn’t like the film,” he said stiffly.

  “The film was fine,” she said.

  “You’re upset.” He frowned without quite pouting.

  “No, not at all,” Irene said, getting up to leave. She didn’t know just what sort of coaxing it was going to take to get him to relax, but she was pretty sure she had 68 percent less time for it now than she’d had a few weeks ago. It had been a ridiculous idea to come in the first place.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, as she was putting her boots back on.

  “Look, William—”

  “No, I mean, I get that you’re leaving. It’s just, you said you couldn’t stay at your apartment tonight, and I know Sara said everyone was going out of town. I was worried that—well, do you have anywhere else to go?”

  Irene tossed her coat over her shoulders angrily. “You don’t need to look after me, all right? I have lots of places to go.”

  This always happened. Guys—especially nice ones like William—were always trying to persuade her she needed to be taken care of. It was only the losers and fuck-ups who left her to take care of herself. She tried to remind herself that William didn’t know her whole history. All the worse places she’d slept than a bug-bombed apartment, which hers wasn’t even, though again he didn’t know that.

  Her left arm kept getting jammed in the sleeve. She couldn’t bend her elbow after all the blood they’d taken that afternoon, which only made her more upset.

  “I’ve got friends all over! I’m serious. I could walk over to Penn Station right now, get on any train at all, and I’d be fine.”

  William was standing there, nodding, rocking a little on his heels. Irene had her coat on and was at the door. Was he really just going to stare at the floor and not say anything?

  “Well,” Irene said finally, “what?”

  He looked up at her. “Well, what what?”

  “What are you doing?” she specified.

  He stopped rocking. “Sorry. Just thinking. Sorry.”

  “What about?”

  “The film. Movie. The ending,” he sighed. “Originally Hitchcock wanted Fontaine to write a letter to her mother saying she knows Grant’s a killer but she loves him so much that she’ll die for him. Then she drinks the poison, and it would have ended with Grant mailing the letter. But the studio felt that it should end with a killer being brought to justice—so they forced Hitchcock to change it so Grant attempts suicide.”

  Irene couldn’t believe he was still talking about the film—movie. Whatever. “That’s completely absurd,” she said.

  “Right. I agree. Someone that confident and controlled would never consider suicide—”

  “No, that’s not absurd,” Irene interrupted. “He’s an arrogant prick. And killing yourself like that would be the ultimate act of arrogance.”

  This brought out the red in William’s cheeks again.

  “What I meant is it’s absurd to think he could really kill her.” The flush spread; Irene stepped closer to him and the couch. “In that first scene, right after I came in, where they’re walking outside together and it’s all very romantic and then he calls her Monkeyface, and she gets angry? No self-respecting murderer would call a woman Monkeyface like that. Hitchcock must have known that.”

  Suddenly Mount Sinai felt miles and miles away.

  Irene looked into his dark eyes and said, “So I think you should hurry up and give me a nickname like that right away, so I’ll be sure you’re not a murderer.”

  William laughed. “I can’t! You’re, well, um—too beautiful to make fun of.”

  She steppe
d back a little. She hated that word. Beautiful. It meant nothing; it was too unreliable. What if they took out her eye? If her hair fell out in chunks? If her facial muscles lost their grip? Would he still say she was beautiful?

  But William kept going. “I guess, if you pressed me, I’d say your face is a little . . .”

  “What?” Irene urged. “Come on, I can take it.”

  “Well, it’s your ears, actually. They’re really tiny. It’s almost like they’re trying to climb back into your head.”

  “They are not!” she shouted, jumping up to find a mirror.

  “They are too. You’ve basically got no ears.”

  “No ears?” she shrieked at her reflection in a black-framed mirror without any discernable character, but it wasn’t her ears she stared at. It was him, behind her, smiling shyly. She turned and he grabbed her, and they collapsed together against the couch.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, pushing her hair back as if to study her more closely. “It’s really very becoming, No Ears.”

  “You take it back!” she shrieked.

  Gently he brushed her hair back and kissed one of her allegedly nonexistent ears.

  “There they are!” he exclaimed.

  “There you are,” she said. At last.

  • • •

  Irene slept heavily on top of William, right there on the mahogany leather couch, and he didn’t dare budge for fear of waking her. She’d told him all about her day at the hospital and the first treatment, which would begin in just a few hours. Just before she’d nodded off, he’d made the mistake of asking why she didn’t have any family to visit for the holidays, or to take her to the hospital, for that matter. I left home when I was sixteen, she’d explained. I won’t get into all the reasons I had to go. I just never belonged there. People get born into the wrong families sometimes. Just like souls wind up in the wrong bodies occasionally. I have a very old soul. I think my soul belongs in the body of someone who’s already a hundred and ninety-five.