“Yeah, I mean, my baby cousin handles things better than her, apparently.”
“Was she right, though?”
“I dunno. I’m here, alone, no Sam, and you don’t hear me bitching about it. Guess she couldn’t unlock the old ball-and-chain for a five minute dance, huh?”
He raises his brows.
Oops. Perhaps I overstepped a line.
“You don’t go anywhere with Sam, though.”
“That’s not true. I went out for dinner with him last week.”
“What’d you get?”
“Pizza.”
He shoves my arm. “That doesn’t count!”
“Still dinner.” I shove him back. “Anyway, would you look at this jungle?” I stretch my hands up toward the decorative ceiling. “Looks like a fine place for an adventure.”
“You know, if this were a jungle,” he says, “I think I know who’d be the big bad lion preying on all the innocent antelopes.”
“The Boss Man?”
“The one and only.”
Another story commences, and within minutes we’re rolling in laughter. It’s like work at the Lab, except I’m in a dress and there’s no paperwork to sort. I wish I could say no one breathes down our necks, but I can almost feel my mother’s disapproving stare from across the room.
Piren Allston
Lara hasn’t spoken a word since we left the wedding. Her silence is louder than shouting. It’s also twice as deadly.
I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. “So…my brother’s a pretty good dancer, huh?”
“Mmm.”
“Can’t believe he’s married. Steph and him look good together.”
Silence.
“You looked great too.” I reach across the console and squeeze her shoulder.
“Sure.” She keeps her arms tight at her sides, facing the window in the passenger seat.
I pull over to the side of the road and ram the gear in park.
“Okay, what is this?” I rest my elbow on the wheel and pinch my forehead. “We’re having fun, I ask for one dance with an old friend, and now you won’t talk. What do you want from me?”
She rotates toward me. “Would you spend more time with me if I gave myself a stupid nickname? Wrote dumb made-up stories about phony adventures?”
My mouth opens, then closes again.
“Or maybe if I’d been mean to Mrs. Henkel when we were kids, I could have been the one doing the show on stage for everyone. Gone to Under Five instead of the bowling alley in middle school. Been all those things you wanted then. Then you’d want me now.”
“Lara, what are you talking about?”
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I’m not that person—that perfect, preppy, laughing-all-the-time, sexy girl you want. I get it, okay? I’m not her.”
“What? I love you; I love the person you are.”
She grits her teeth. “It’s her. Tracy Bailey.”
“What about her?”
“You spend more time with her than you spend with me.”
“That’s not true.”
Her brows lower. “At the Lab. At your own brother’s wedding. Heck, sometimes I think you work late just to see more Tracy Bailey.”
“Stop! That’s stupid. You’re my Partner.” I point to her chest. “You. Not her. You and I are planning our wedding.”
“Is that what you want?”
“What?” I reach for her hand, but she yanks it away.
“What if I wasn’t your Partner? What if there were no Assignments? What if you had to choose who to marry, like the old days?”
“That’s ridiculous. You know that doesn’t—”
“Would you pick me?” Her glassy eyes meet mine. “’Cause sometimes I think you wish you were Assigned to her.”
I blink. “Lara, that’s—”
“Answer the question. If there were no Assignments. Would you still pick me?”
“Of course.”
She twists back toward the window, inconspicuously wiping a stray tear from her left eye. My foot jitters on the gas pedal.
Given a choice, would I have picked Lara?
I don’t have an answer.
Tracy Bailey
I pull into The Terrace. My phone vibrates for the zillionth time since I left the wedding. Sixteen missed calls: Mom. I clench the phone in my hand and press my forehead to the steering wheel. My thumb hovers over the redial button for a moment, but I drop the device back into my purse instead.
I take a deep breath and unlock the front door. Sam grabs my arm and yanks me through the threshold. I stumble, steadying myself against the wall.
“I love—”
“Alex Jones said you were hanging on Piren Allston all night.”
I rub my arm. “I wasn’t ‘hanging,’ thanks.”
“Why do you do this to me?”
“Do what?” I flail my hands out. “Hang out with my friend?”
“You make me look like a fool.”
“That’s not hard.”
“Shut up!” He swings his fist, barreling it into the drywall.
“Nice going.” I run my finger over the dent. “I’m not explaining to the landlord why this shit is here. And I was not hanging on him!”
“Well you were super friendly with him, that’s for sure.”
“What?” I get up in Sam’s face. “Should I have ignored him? At his own brother’s wedding? Which, by the way, you chose not to attend.”
“Shut up!” He balls his fists at his sides, face flushing red. “I’m sick of competing with him for your attention.” He whirls around and stomps down the hall. “Done. So done.”
I throw my arms up. “I’m so done with your temper!”
He slams his bedroom door.
Piren Allston: the one surefire topic to force Sam and me to talk.
Piren Allston
I tiptoe out of the apartment before Lara’s even awake. Her rumbling snores in the next room had me cringing into my pillow all damn night.
I arrive at work two hours early and beat Clarence to the office. I don’t care; I just needed to be out of that damn apartment. I can’t take another second with her.
Grumbling to myself, I slide into my seat to tackle a stack of to-be-sorted packets. The early-morning janitor runs a growling vacuum in the hall behind me; the noise makes me flinch.
Will someone shut that damn thing off?
My head collapses into my arms. I clench fistfuls of hair in my sweaty hands.
Eight a.m. and this day already blows.
Prying the lidded curtains from my bloodshot eyes, I slug steaming coffee from a Styrofoam cup. It scorches my throat all the way down the pipe. I pick up a packet and wait for the caffeine to seep through my veins.
Folder one: Parents: Marianne and Roger Corliss. Child: African-American Male. Second trimester. No complications. Parents’ blood type: O-positive. Family History of Diabetes.
I tighten my grip, crinkling the pages.
Sorry, kid.
I slap the packet into the Ready for Assigning pile.
By nine a.m., sharp clicks start sounding from the employee time-clock in the hall. Sorted packets lie scattered in stacks in front of me. The diminished to-be-sorted pile lies in a small heap at the other end of the table.
Trace walks in as I’m slamming the final papers into their piles. I mumble out a greeting.
“Whoa, there. Easy, killer.” Her mouth curls into a grin. “I have a present for you.”
I blink my overtired eyes. “What? Why?”
“I found it. And it made me think of you.”
She tosses something at me, and I catch it midair. It’s a rubber toy shaped like a plump man with bulging green eyes.
“Squeeze it.” She bounces on her toes. “Squeeze the body!”
I wrap my hand around its rubbery mass and squeeze. The head engorges, popping the eyes out with a squeak.
Trace claps with delight. “It was made for you, Fat Head.”
I couldn’t
stop the smile if I wanted to.
Bad day cured.
Tracy Bailey
I rush home from work and dump my bags on the floor.
Five fifteen sharp. He can’t balk at that.
Draping my coat over a hanger, I peek into the living room. Sam stoops over the coffee table, surrounded by slabs of wood and various tools. A kitchen chair lies upside down on the rug, prepped for surgery. Ah, yes, one of my Partner’s many household projects. Sam squints, twisting a screwdriver into the chair’s splintery underbelly. I clear my throat, and he jerks up.
“I love you, Sam Macey.”
“I love you, Tracy Bailey.”
“Whatcha makin’?” I crouch down beside him.
He grunts, returning his focus to the tools. “Trying to fix this damn wobbling chair.”
I rock on my heels, shifting my weight back and forth. “So, how was work?”
“Fine.” He tightens the bolt, tongue clasped in his teeth in concentration.
I grab a wooden piece and rotate it in my fingers. “Anything…fun at the office?”
“No.” He rips the wood from my hands and tosses it back into the pile. “We don’t all get to goof around the Lab all day. Some of us have real jobs.”
Oh, like mopping piss off the floor at the doctor’s office?
“Right.”
He still hasn’t gotten over the fact that I got his first choice Placement.
I squat in silence while he screws and tightens various knobs and pieces. I’m not sure he knows what the hell he’s doing. What’s with the random pieces of wood to fix a damn chair? And since when does a wobbly leg require a hammer? But that doesn’t stop him. He doesn’t give me another glance.
“Okay—” I stand, brushing a stray wood shaving off my leg “—I’m gonna go.”
“There’s something for you on the table. My mom dropped it off.”
I swing into the kitchen to find a thick pink book waiting for me.
Ten Thousand Baby Names.
My stomach drops.
“I highlighted my favorite ones,” Sam calls from the living room.
I pinch the book between my thumb and forefinger, holding it two feet from my body as I trudge back to the other room.
“You know we’re like, four years from needing this, right?”
He drops his screwdriver into the toolbox with a clang. “Yeah, but I wanna start trying immediately, on our wedding night. I wanna be prepared.”
My teeth clench so tight they might shatter. “Don’t you think it’s a little soon?”
“Nope.” He grabs his hammer, haphazardly positioning a nail over the chair leg.
“But—”
He starts hammering, driving the nail into the wood with four hard whacks and drowning out any further conversation.
I scurry back to the kitchen and open the first page to find a yellow sticky note:
I prefer Dominique for a girl and Rafael for a boy.
Let’s discuss. Xoxo - Mrs. Cassandra Macey
The book falls onto the table with a thud. Hands up, I back away slowly.
Piren Allston
I lie on the couch, immersed in my drawing. Lara hovers nearby.
“I think we should start a new tradition,” she says, pressing her fingers to her mouth in concentration.
I flip to a clean page in my sketchbook and trace a charcoal circle. “Like what?”
“I was thinking…game nights. Like, we can invite other couples over, hold board game competitions, what do you think?”
“Oh, uh…sure, I guess.”
She leans over me and pushes my open book down onto my chest. “We need to be more social. I love you, but seriously.”
She kisses my cheek, then sinks down into the armchair. Black charcoal marks now dapple my white button-down.
I release a deep breath. “Okay. When do you want to do it?”
She flips through her cellphone calendar. “How about Tuesday night?”
“Okay.”
She frowns. “Why aren’t you more excited about this?”
“I am! It’s just, board games aren’t really my thing.”
Her frown melts into a scowl. “I’m listening for better ideas.”
“It’s fine. Board games it is.”
“Who should we invite?”
“Oh, um, I don’t know.” I drag my charcoal in a straight line down the center of the circle. “Who do you want to invite?”
Somehow I’m guessing “Trace and Sam” isn’t an acceptable answer.
“I was thinking Toni Henders and Alan Carrey.”
“Sure.”
“But you’ve got to invite them.”
My head falls back to the couch cushion. “Why me?” The words come out whinier than intended. “It’s your idea.”
“Oh, come on.” She rises from the chair. “I hardly know them. Just call and invite them. Tuesday at seven. I’ll buy wine and snacks.”
I rub my forehead. “Fine.”
I sit in a circle with Lara, Alan, and Toni. Alan drapes himself over his Partner like a throw rug. Toni absentmindedly twirls a finger through her hair, thumbing over her cellphone.
Lara bounces with delight as she arranges Monopoly pieces on the board.
“You’re up!” She tosses Toni the dice. Eyes on her phone screen, Toni fumbles, and the cubes fall to the floor. Lara scrambles to retrieve them. “Here you go.”
Twenty minutes in, I’m pretty sure everyone except Lara is bored.
Toni’s thumbs click across her cellphone keys; every few seconds, her phone glows and buzzes with a new message. Alan’s droopy eyes focus directly on Toni’s chest. Each time she looks up, he pretends to scratch his head and gaze at the ceiling. I carefully observe the duo for new story fodder.
Lara stares intently at the game.
“Ooh, Alan!” She claps her hands together. “You can buy Atlantic Ave. Damn it, I wanted that one. I’m totally getting Marvin Gardens before you, though.” She plops her terrier piece across the board. “Ha!”
“You got drinks?” Alan asks, through a moaning yawn.
“Um, yeah…Hang on.” I start to stand, but Lara bounds up and dashes to the kitchen before I can move.
Alan arches his brows at me. I fidget my game piece in my hands.
My Partner returns with two full glasses and hands them to our friends.
“Some vino for our guests.” She pats me on the head. “Piren, honey, would you mind taking your turn? You’ve got to pay attention to these things.” She ruffles my hair.
“Sure.” My ears burn.
Alan slugs his white wine in two gulps, then nuzzles into Toni’s neck. She giggles and squirms away, her own wine threatening to spill over her glass onto our carpet.
Lara tugs my sweatshirt hood hanging down my back. “You could have offered them something when they arrived,” she hisses in my ear.
This is your game night, not mine.
“Sorry.”
She pats my hand. “It’s okay, just remember for next time.”
“Whose turn is it?” I ask.
“Oh my gosh, I knew it.” Lara huffs. “You weren’t even paying attention.”
Toni rubs her upper arm, keeping her eyes on the floor. Alan pointedly focuses on the wall.
“Ugh…Piren.” Lara shakes her head. “What am I supposed to do with you?”
What did I do?
I grit my teeth. “Can I talk to you in the kitchen, Lara?”
She nods and puts on a smile. “Stay put, folks. We’ll be right back.”
Lara follows me into the kitchen. She releases a lofty sigh. “What?”
“Why’d you snap at me?”
“Why? ’Cause you made me look like a horrible hostess. And besides, they’re your friends, not mine.”
“You invited them.”
“You invited them.”
“’Cause you made me!”
“Well, I want us to have friends! We need to do something social. It’s like you d
on’t even care.”
“Well, sorry!” I throw my hands up. “Sometimes when I get home, I just want to relax.”
“Yeah? Tired from all that work you do with Tracy Bailey?”
My arms clap back down at my sides. “Why do you always have to bring her into this?”
“You spend more time with her than you spend with me.”
“Will you stop?”
“You do! I’m so damn fed up! She gets your attention and sends you home to me exhausted!”
“But—”
“You always have another excuse to spend time with her, and I can’t even get five minutes with—”
“—Come on, Trace, I—”
Shit.
I catch my blunder mid-sentence, but it’s too late. Lara’s stung expression speaks louder than any of her harsh words.
“Lara…”
She tears from the kitchen and back to the living room. I fall over my feet trying to catch up.
“Well, I hope you two had a lovely—”
We stop in our tracks. Alan and Toni are gone.
“Do you think they heard us fighting?” Lara whispers.
I run my hands through my hair. “I think the whole block heard us.”
Tracy Bailey
“Congratulations.” Clarence pokes his head into our office. “You survived a whole year here without driving me to insanity. Come to the break room at lunch for cake…That’s an order.” He gives us a wink before leaving us alone to sort.
I suppose our boss deserves a medal for tolerating our antics all year and not firing us after our thousandth warning.
“A whole year, huh?” I pass Piren some papers.
“Crazy.”
“So, what do you think?” I thumb through a stack. “Work at the Lab all you hoped and dreamed it would be when you filled out that Placement thing?”
“Oh, so much more. After all, where would—” he squints at the sheet in his hands “—little Kimberly Arsenal be without my genius sorting?”
I shove his arm. “Better off, that’s where.”
He sticks out his tongue at me, and I return the gesture.
We gather in the break room at lunch for the celebration. Pernessa, the Placement Third Wheel, slouches on a seat in the corner, texting.
Missing Pieces Page 19