by Tara Brown
She nods, laughing like she already knew I was behind schedule again.
Giving one last pet, I jump up and dash for the door, waving. “See you next week, Mrs. Starling.”
“Bye, Jane!”
Her words have me instantly stopping and turning. “What?”
“I said ‘Bye, Andrea.’ You better hurry.” She waves me off, but the name Jane seems like such an odd mistake, considering . . .
I wave again and hurry out the door, uncertain whether she’d said my dead sister’s name, or if I’d misheard and somehow subconsciously imagined my sister’s name.
When I get back in the office, the coffee is just finishing. I pour a cup and drop into my chair, preparing for the appointment I am about to have. I don’t even have a second to stretch my neck or even just sip my coffee before she’s slamming the door and greeting me with her sunglasses still on. “Hi, Dr. Spears. Sorry I’m late.” Her name is Maria Bentley, and we’ve been working on her inability to relate emotionally. She complains, but she never stops and thinks or feels. I think she comes only so she can say she does.
I don’t even bother to tell her she’s early; she’ll cut me off. I take a breath and let her continue her rant. It has become a bit of a routine for us. “The babysitter was late and the van was out of window wash, and I couldn’t even find my yoga clothes for my class after this. It was a brutal morning. I swear, God is against me ever just relaxing for a minute.” I feel myself put a wall up against her roiling ball of madness and energy. “And last night I was in the shower and I heard him talking to someone. He was on the phone at ten at night. When he climbed in the shower I asked him—I said, ‘Ted, who were you on the phone with?’ But he denied it. He said I was going crazy and the voices in my head were having conversations now. So I got out before him and checked his phone.”
Our session continues with her tense routine of suspected adultery and powerlessness, until she picks her things up—almost in the exact opposite order of how she entered—and departs. I have never agreed with their marriage. She always comes across as his doormat.
Sitting back, I take a deep breath and a sip of my cold coffee, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the pace of that fourteen-minute session. We always do fifty-five minute sessions with loads of talking about nothing.
The phone rings, flashing a number I don’t know. “Hello, Dr. Andrea Spears’s office.” I answer like I have a receptionist, but that would mean having someone else in my space constantly.
“Jane!”
I wrinkle my forehead. Jane again? “I’m—I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.”
“Jane, it’s me, Andrea. You have to find your way out. The box is the key. Find the box. You know it’s hidden somewhere safe.” The confused woman on the other end of the line stops as if she’s midsentence and breathes a few breaths softly, almost obscenely. “You know you kept it somewhere he won’t see it. Try to find it.”
“Are you a patient of mine?” I ask as she hangs up. I call the number on the call display, but it goes directly to a recorded message explaining that it’s missing the area code. I look at it intently, wondering where I’ve seen the number before: 867-5309. I whisper the number, but it doesn’t ring any bells, except one that’s bugging me, one I can’t place.
With no answers coming to mind, I open the client files on my computer and enter Jane. No names pop. I don’t have a single client named Jane.
I sit back and wonder who she might have been and how likely it is that she has the name of my dead sister.
2. LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX
I tap my fingernail against my lip as I watch the Lower East Side pass in front of me. Heading north in the taxi to my dinner date gives me time to contemplate the number of the woman who called me.
The cabbie rattles on about something, but his voice is muted compared with The Howard Stern Show, playing loudly on the radio. The driver honks and waves his hands. “Pick a lane, asswipe!”
My mind is stuck on the numbers. I can’t even stop adding them to my chant. They form a tune almost, taunting me.
The cabbie shouts at the radio show and slaps the top of the dash. “You’re a fucking moron!” He changes the station to a song and nods his head. “A classic.”
I hear it and remember something. The lyrics are numbers and the numbers are lyrics—“867-5309.” I remember the song and where I was the first time I heard it. Sung by a woman with different-colored eyes. She was twirling and telling me she almost called me Jenny but she didn’t. She liked Jane better. “867-5309/Jenny” was the name of the song.
Jane?
My insides clench as I contemplate the possibility that my memory is actually my sister Jane’s and I am remembering her telling me the story. I know she did. I know she told me she was wearing overalls and her shoelaces were untied. She told me the story or I watched it, before they died.
It’s unsettling thinking of one’s family as gone, but after so many years passing by this way, I don’t feel unsettled about them being dead. I feel unsettled because I remember something. It’s not major, but it’s something, almost tangible it’s so real.
I am an amnesiac. I don’t remember anything, ever.
The tune sticks with me as the cab stops and I toss cash and dash for the restaurant in a sudden rainstorm.
Rory is standing waiting for me in a peacoat, smiling. I stop, scared to continue to him as the rain pours down on me and soaks me. My feet won’t move. They are stuck to the concrete of the sidewalk. He waves. “Hurry! Yer getting soaked.”
I part my lips with a word sitting on them, stuck the way my feet are. I want to say something, but I don’t know what it is. Something about seeing him under the awning in a peacoat is disconcerting. Was he wearing it when he left me this morning?
“Andrea!” he calls to me, looking confused or worried. I force my feet forward, walking to his embrace. “Did ya get a wee bit fuzzy?”
I nod and snuggle into him, taking a long draw of the smell of him from the coat.
“Let’s get inside and warm up with some Thai. You’ll come around. What do ya say?”
I glance up, and for some reason I can’t smile, so I nod and walk to the door.
When we get inside the fuzzy feeling goes away. The smell of the food gnaws at me, reminding me I haven’t eaten in hours.
We sit in the window, my preferred seat, and the server offers us a smile. “You want tea or soda?”
“Water for me, please.”
“I’ll take a Coke.” Rory smiles back at her, blinking and staring for too long. He says he does it to make patients feel better, more comfortable, but he doesn’t have the best bedside manner as far as doctors go.
As she walks off he grins and speaks in a low tone, “Her accent is thick. Always a good sign. I hate eating ethnic and having a North American working there.” I give him a look, making him glance down and shake his head. “I don’t mean it like that. I just think ethnic people should work with the ethnic food.”
“How are you even racist? You’re Irish. You’re the underdog of the entire United Kingdom, including Wales. You can’t make fun of anyone at all.”
He chuckles and reaches across for me, making me feel normal for the first time since the day started. “Tell me about yer day.”
I open my mouth to do that, but as I have been doing all day, I close up. So I say the first thing that comes to mind. “A client suspects her husband is having an affair with someone from his office.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Wealthy people?”
“Yes.”
“It’s always the same with them. Let me guess—the wife is from the wrong side of the tracks, not rich like the husband, and he’s getting bored with her after a few kids have come along and she’s not tight like she once was. So he screws around on her with a girl from the office. Someone young enough that it won’t actually become a sit
uation for him because she won’t want him to leave his wife.”
I sit back, a bit stunned. “Did you bug my office?”
“What?” His answer is abrupt. “Naw. It’s always the same with those people. Rich men grow up with too many options; they can’t help themselves. They always stray.”
The subject feels like a tender one, so I shrug and leave it at that. I don’t agree, even if my work is mostly with rich women who are miserable in their marriages. Poor women are miserable too. It isn’t just the upper classes. Maybe it’s monogamy. “How was your day?”
He sighs, but it turns into a yawn. “Besides being exhausted all day long, it was fine. We went through files of patients we have in foreign countries—we’ve had a few doctors, nurses, and aid workers contract serious illnesses. So we have to ensure they’re getting the best treatment from their fellow colleagues at the United Nations World Health Organization. We have to care for our own and we have to assess need based on critical illness.” He yawns again. “Quite boring actually.”
“It does sound a bit boring, but at least they’re getting the care they need.”
He rubs his thumb into the palm of my hand, caressing it like a deep-tissue massage. “Go to the bathroom.”
I glance up, shocked.
He offers a sly grin, but it doesn’t mask the dominating tone that suggests he wants to fuck. “Go to the bathroom.”
I get up as if on autopilot; I don’t even think about it further, and walk to the ladies’ room. It’s a strange request, but he doesn’t look like he’s in the mood to argue.
When I get inside I look into the mirror, pausing and staring at my eyes. The pale blue of them matches almost exactly. It reminds me of a saying I heard once about your eyes being sisters and not twins. They would never be the same color. I like that saying and I don’t even remember who gave it to me.
I wonder if there’s a saying about exhausted eyes. The door swings open—I jump but not nearly as high as I would have at seeing a strange man. It’s just Rory. “What are you doing? We can’t do it in here!”
He pushes me against the counter, lifting me slightly. I don’t fight him, regardless of the fact I’m clearly not comfortable with sex in a public washroom. His kisses are too wet with saliva; he’s too excited. He has an overactive salivary gland that acts up the moment he gets worked up, so I avoid the kisses. Talking won’t do anything but put him in a bad mood. When he’s decided something is a good idea, anything counter is pointless.
He invades my mouth, undoing my pants and dragging them down. He kisses my neck, and then bends me over the sink’s edge so we are both looking at ourselves, or each other, in the mirror.
He drags my underwear down sharply, scraping my thighs. I wince, at both the pain and the expression of it on my face.
He shoves himself inside me, instantly looking calm again. The rage and impatience are gone and slowly he slides himself in and out of me. He doesn’t notice the lack of lube or the look of shock on my face. He doesn’t notice anything. He’s in his own world, with his eyes closed and his mouth open.
I rock into the counter, my face inches from my reflection. I can’t help but look at myself, no longer wanting to see the bliss on his face as he violates me. My jerking and swaying reflection makes the room spin a bit, but I focus on my eyes. I stare so hard I swear my eyes turn two different colors.
I look into the dark-blue eye, noting the hint of purple that’s there. My reflection glances up, but I swear I am still looking into my own eyes. She wrinkles her nose and then looks back at me. Her lips are moving, or are they my lips? She’s talking but I can’t hear her.
I think it’s a result of the vertigo from being shoved into the counter, but I swear my lips are pressed together in hate and despair.
She moves her mouth again and I catch a word. Four. She’s saying four over and over. So I say it. “Four?”
“What?” Rory looks confused in the mirror.
“Harder.”
He grins and ups his pace.
I glance back and her cheeks have flushed red, but she doesn’t look embarrassed and I know I’m not. She looks angry. Angry that my boyfriend is doing this here, maybe.
She looks straight at me and mouths words, but I understand her as if she is speaking. The four-leaf box. Find the four-leaf box. You hid it somewhere he won’t look.
I pull my brows together as he ruts and finishes with twitchy jerks.
A moment later my reflection is again just my face, annoyed and bewildered as he pulls himself from me and walks into one of the stalls, leaving me bent over the sink.
In the reflection of him and me I see something else—a stage. We are playing at something, and he is an actor and I am too. This isn’t real. The world we live in is fake, and I don’t know how or why. If I said that aloud, I’d need to check myself into a mental institution.
I pull up my pants, leaving whatever mess he made, and walk out of the bathroom, heading right for the exit.
I’m halfway down the block when he catches up. “What’s wrong?” he shouts.
I turn, exasperated and spent. “You just assaulted me in a bathroom. Really? What’s wrong? I don’t know, how about the fact you ruined my night on purpose because you didn’t want to go to pottery.” It feels like the most brazen thing I have ever said.
His eyes cloud over with fury. “Are ya kidding me? Not two weeks ago ya asked for us to spice things up. I figured bathroom sex and some Thai before yer silly pottery class might be just the ticket.” His accent is thick, ridiculously so.
I roll my eyes and stalk off to hail a cab. My underwear is soaked and my patience is gone—to the point that I’m hallucinating.
Essentially I think I need some sleep.
The lyrics to the song slip back into my head as I walk, the digits of the phone number.
867-5309
867-5309
867-5309
867-5309
I chant it and make my steps match the beat in my head.
If the answer to what it all means would just pop into my half-crazed head, I’d be able to shake this feeling of artificiality in my world.
3. RADIO NOWHERE
Rory’s snoring. It’s so bad I can feel the vibration in my skin. I roll away from him and wrap my pillow around my head. But that doesn’t help. The moment I close my eyes, I hear the numbers again and again, on a loop, and somehow it incorporates into his snoring, making a song.
I might kill someone if I don’t get some sleep.
Finally, defeated and dejected, I get up and slip down the hall to the bathroom. I sit on the toilet and listen to him snoring. Even peeing doesn’t mute it.
I think he is an animal.
Thinking about him evokes Maria, my client from earlier. I can’t help but wonder how she’s doing.
The strangest feeling washes over me as I think about her—one of envy. If she divorces him, if she says no, she wouldn’t have to do all the things he requires for his life to run smoothly, and work on top of that.
Her life would get very uncomplicated.
The notion is enticing.
867-5309
The stupid numbers are stuck in my brain. I stare at the bathtub and then realize, they might not just be numbers. I count it out on my hands, getting hfg-ec0i. If it was a word scrambler, I would replace the 0 with an actual o. So the letters are hfgecoi.
I rearrange them, realizing there isn’t a single word in the English dictionary that comes from using all those letters.
Drumming my fingers on the tub, I space out.
Fiocheg, gif-echo, hc-fogie . . . there is nothing.
The letters mean nothing. I get up and walk into the kitchen, picking up my phone and entering the title of the song in Google, “867-5309/Jenny.” That has no significance to me other than that memory of the woman singing it.
I whisper it, almost wondering what a silly name like that feels like on the tongue: “Tommy Tutone.”
A flash instantly hits me like a ton of bricks. I heard the song on the radio awhile ago. I was in the bathroom looking for something. Yet I can’t recall it clearly.
Movement catches my eye, but what I see has no explanation. A vision of me is walking down the hall, holding something and looking all around the house. I step back, expecting the air to go cold or my heart to leap from my chest.
But I’m not scared. The thing in my hands has me mystified or entranced.
She/me walks right across the room in front of me and out the door—through the door.
I hurry back to the bedroom and pull on clothes and a sweater. I slip on shoes and rush out the door and down the street.
I run to catch up to her. Rory’s right; I do walk fast. I run my hand through the air the ghost of me is in, but this version of me must be made of my dreams and exhaustion and walks like she is in a different world. Somehow the two worlds are crossing, like she’s a ghost reliving her version of our death as it happened wherever she is from.
Or a foreshadowing of my death?
Will I die tonight?
I laugh at myself, concluding that the ghost is more likely to be a reflection of my day, based upon the varying clients and the lack of sleep. Or even more likely, I am in my bed sleeping at this very moment and it’s all a dream.
But she walks exactly where I think she will. She doesn’t knock on the door but walks right through it, proving she is indeed a ghost or a dream. I grab the hide-a-key and open the door quietly. Binx comes running to me, weaving in between my legs.
“I never thought you would finally understand it all.”
I jump when Mrs. Starling speaks into the dark hallway.
“Understand what?”
“How you came to be here.” She lifts a flashlight to her face like we’re at camp and she’s trying to tell me the end of the creepy story about the man with the hook hand. I wince and step back.