“How many of these did you get printed?” Gretchen asked Roz now, her face wrinkled with worry.
“Not nearly enough!” Roz growled. After wolfing down a bagel, she had stared to paint her toenails dark brown. She was before the TV, her soles on the coffee table and bits of cotton between some toes. Gretchen had moved the copy of her cousin's book, Lotto Balls of Shame, to the dinette table. It was one of her prized possessions, and she didn't want brown nail polish on it. “I've already put up hundreds around the neighborhood. Now that you're back, we can take the train into Manhattan and put them up there. I think we'll start with Union Square, then I can work West, and you can work East.”
“How are we going to carry them all? They must weigh a ton.”
Roz pointed to two carrier bags next to the wilting plant.
“ I-I'm not feeling well,” Gretchen chanced.
“Don't you dare back out! I'll up your rent!”
Gretchen shrunk against the posters.
“Roz, it's just that...I don't want to spread his face around town, because—”
“He spread his ass cheeks wide enough around our kitchen floor! I know what you're going to say. You told me about it the other day.” She moved on to her fingernails. Her toes wriggled beside her coffee mug. “Those two thugs were going to shoot you, you saw your life flash before your eyes, then somehow they spared you, but decided to rape you instead, which would leave you alive but scarred for life,” she was saying it all in a singsong voice, belittling it, and it made Gretchen want to smack her. “But then you were saved. It was like God sent some man down to spare you. A guardian angel. For some greater good. Now it's like you're a born-again Christian. A Pollyanna. I get it. I seen it all the time on TV.” She nodded at the TV, as if Gretchen might be unsure what this word meant. “And speaking of that guy, your knight in shining scrubs, did you ever find out which apartment he came from?”
David Lee Roth. Yes, that was really the name on her savior's card. Just like the wild sexy rocker dude, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer with the long blonde highlighted hair and leather pants who used to sing for Van Halen. “Jump,” “You Really Got Me,” “Hot For Teacher.” Big in the 80s and 90s. The Sparkly Earrings, strangely enough, had even done an encore once with a cover of “Dance The Night Away.” David Lee Roth had peacocked his way through the 1980s in a pair of spandex pants, charismatic, dangerous, for the times, but mostly harmless. Gretchen had been too embarrassed to tell Roz his name. Roz would never believe her, even if she showed her his card. Roz might even think Gretchen had made the card herself!
Gretchen had done a Google search, of course (Google searches were becoming increasingly important in her life; she couldn't fathom how humanity had survived without them), but page after infuriating page of the David Lee Roth had come up. There was no mention that she could find in the hundreds and thousands of links of a David Lee Roth. It was very frustrating. Why had his parents decided to call him David Lee? Had they been fans? Had he been conceived at a Van Halen concert? Did they have strange senses of humor? She could only imagine the ribbing poor David Lee had had in high school. No, actually, it seemed like he had probably been the quarterback. He had probably not been bullied.
Then Gretchen had tried to look up online what percentage of people had gray eyes, just to have a little more information about him. It was half an hour of her life that she'd never get back. All she had learned was that it was 'rare.'
“Not yet, no. Apartment four went on vacation two days ago, the super told me. So I still have them to ask. But he didn't come from any of the others. I asked.”
The night of the attack, Gretchen had climbed to the fourth floor and worked her way down. It have given her a chance to finally meet the neighbors. When the doors had been pried open, she was greeted with suspicion and hostility, fear, scorn and French. But also kindness, sympathy, concern, and hope for collaboration on a semi-nude photo shoot in some vague future by the skeevy creature in apartment eight. But nobody knew who David Lee Roth was. Well, they knew who the David Lee Roth was, except the French girl, but not Gretchen's David Lee Roth.
“It doesn't really matter,” Gretchen said. Roz inspected her nails, hands fluttering. She approved, and waved them in the air to dry. Or... Gretchen looked over at Roz out of the corner of her eye. Why had her roommate chosen this moment to paint her nails? They had looked fine. Was it to avoid looking at her? Could Roz have picked up two men that night? Had her savior been the third in a tawdry, sordid menage-a-trois on Roz's much-abused mattress? “I really need to call him and thank him anyway. I will be speaking to him.” As this didn't seem to faze Roz, Gretchen's suspicion waned. Was she becoming paranoid? “What I'm trying to say is, I was in a bad, dark, scary place the night before it happened. Before I went to get the milk, I woke up and didn't know where I was or who I was.”
“Sounds like you need Bellevue, babe. I might have a straight jacket in my closet if you need one. ” Roz turned suddenly and faced her, brush aloft. “ Are you trying to tell me something? Are you going to appear over my bed one night with a knife in your hand and a creepy smile on your face? Should I be keeping my door locked? ”
“I don't think so, no. I'm trying to tell you how I felt before. I don't feel like that now. You know I was a mess when I moved in here. All that stuff with...well, you know who.”
“Yeah, that asshole M—”
“No! Don't say his name!”
“I'd go looney-tunes too if he did to me what he did to you. Guys, right?” Roz nodded at the piles of posters. “Think of this as a campaign to help us females band together against the abuse they put us through.”
“And suddenly, now, it's like I've broken through into a new world. I wonder if this is what people feel like after they've come into contact with aliens. You know, after they've been abducted and subjected to all those strange medical treatments with those bizarre other-wordly instruments of theirs, terrifying and electrifying at the same time, the best and the worst together in one experience. I haven't been able to sleep at night thinking about it.”
Gretchen was different now. She had woken up early that morning and done her eight minute abs workout. Then she had ventured into Manhattan for quail eggs, because the supermarkets around her seemed to still be catering to the older residents, favoring pig knuckles and strange tubular vegetables from foreign lands she feared to eat. Gretchen's first Russian class began in two weeks, and she had already learned how to count from one to five thanks to a YouTube video. “Odin, dva, tri, chitera, pyat...” All she had left was going to mass, but there hadn't been a Sunday yet. When it came, she'd go. Then any and all acts of God would be welcomed. She would be ready. Bar a child or two, she would have done everything in life she had set out to do.
She didn't know how long she'd keep this up for (she was quite exhausted), but it felt good to be living like someone better.
“Anyway,” Roz said, “once my nails are dry, we're going.”
Gretchen sighed as she plucked a teabag out of her cup.
“Hey.” Roz surprised Gretchen by nodding at Lotto Balls of Shame. “That book's about your family, right?”
Gretchen was surprised. “Oh! You've been...reading it?”
She had never envisioned a scene in her mind where Roz and a book were together. Lotto Balls of Shame was a fictionalized account by her oldest cousin, Moira Flood, of Gretchen's aunt and uncle Fionnuala and Paddy and her six cousins, Moira's brothers and sisters, going after Ursula and Jed to get their hands on the lottery money. Moira had moved to Malta to get away from the strife and had written the book there, safely out of the way. The book hadn't sold many copies, but Gretchen read and reread the most shocking chapters when she thought her life was hopeless. And she had been reading those chapters a lot lately. But everything was relative, and nothing so far in Gretchen's life was as bad as what the Floods had put her parents through. So far.
Roz shrugged. “Leafing through now and again. It's always on the table, a
fter all, and sometimes there's only crap on the TV. Why don't you speak like them? You're Irish, right?”
Gretchen shrugged. “Half.”
“But in the book, they're all...oh, I don't know if I can remember it now, but they talk like, 'aye, surely,' and 'catch yerself on,' whatever that means,” here Roz flung out her hands and tried to 'catch' her body with them, without success, 'and flimmin fecking this and flipping effin that. “Why don't you talk like that?”
“When I was about six I lived there, six, seven and eight, so then I started to talk like that, but then we moved to Istanbul, and I lost my accent.”
“But they really did all that? Your aunt and uncle and their kids? Your little cousin threw petrol bombs on your mom and dad's house? And your aunt had your other cousin, the one in jail, send his inmate thugs after your parents when they were released? Poured acid on their lawn? Flooded their house? All because they were jealous your mom and dad bought that big house after they won the lottery? And they went after them, even though they didn't win that much?”
“After my mom and dad bought that house, there's wasn't much change left from a million dollars.”
“Yes. I can tell, you living here and all. But...all that shit your cousin wrote about really happened, right? Your poor mom and dad. I'd never want to go to that place you come from after reading that book. Derry? It sounds awful! Terrifying! The tourist board must have banned the book. They'd never get any visitors. I thought Ireland was all happy people and leprechauns and rainbows. But the girls in the book are all drunk and carrying purses full of vomit they don't remember vomiting into, the guys wandering around town with sharpened screwdrivers. Did you carry a screwdriver as a weapon?”
“I used the heels of my stilettos.”
“And all the kids at their First Holy Communion high on drugs? Eight year olds? They thought they were, uh, disco sweeties, I think Ecstasy was called there? Did your little cousin, that little girl...”
“Siofra?”
Roz screwed her face up. “I think she was called something else.”
“Ah, she's called Sheena in the book. Moira changed all the names. She didn't want to be sued for libel.”
“Did that Sheena really march into the drug dealer's den and demand $300 from the skinhead pushers for her communion gown? Because she didn't want to wear the one that had been passed down by her two older sisters? The tattered one with the egg stains on it?”
“I think there might have been some...artistic license on Moira's part.”
“And those parts that talk about the 70s and 80s, all the bombs and riots and the kid who was supposed to be you in the book, Gertie, playing on the barricade of burnt out cars at the bottom of your street...”
“That bit is true. That was my childhood. The British troops pulled out, oh, in the 90s sometime.”
“And now none of them want to speak to you anymore? Because you're the rich Yank? You've got no family left to speak to?”
“I've got my mom and dad and my brothers. We're close.”
“And you've got me.”
Gretchen smiled. It was nice of Roz, but she didn't know if she could count on her really.
The TV station changed suddenly.
“Idiot! You don't have the electricity bill? How stupid can you be? Isn't that why we're all here? Why we dragged your sorry asses into...”
Gretchen screamed. The cup fell to her feet. There, much larger than life on the 52” screen, was Judge Edna Lee, her bad yellow perm and owl-like red frames, roaring abuse at some plaintiffs and defendants who had been dense enough to show up for her small claims court show.
“What did you do, Roz?” Gretchen wailed. “Turn it off! Turn her off!”
She leaped across the room, wailing, her eyes like lasers, trying to locate the remote. She scrabbled under cushions, found it, and pounded button after button until the TV clicked off.
“How could you do that, Roz? You know I'm a wreck! I was attacked a few days ago, but that repulsive woman upsets me even more! You know what she did to me!”
“Calm down,” Roz said, patting her hair and hoping Gretchen wouldn't see her rolling eyes. “She's gone. Don't worry, she's gone. You've turned her off. I wasn't thinking. I guess I sat down on the zapper, and my butt must've flipped the channel over. You know I would never willingly...”
She left the sentence dangling, but deep down Gretchen was wondering if Roz really would willingly... Perhaps it was time to look for another place to live.
“That filth in our home!” Gretchen sputtered, pointing at the blank screen. “In here, my only sanctum from the outer world! I thought there was a wall between before and after, but now I realize the past will always come to haunt me.”
“That poet asshole really did a number on you, didn't he?” Roz asked. She patted her roommate's shaking hand. Gretchen realized she had to take sympathy from the unlikeliest of places.
And then Roz said: “Speaking of bills, though, don't forget, rent's almost due! And I just got the electricity bill. It's $62.90 each. And the gas. $78.33.”
“THE ONLY GOOD THING I can say about this asshole,” Roz said, smacking a poster on the wall next to the taco stand and attacking it with tape, “is that he never hit me. Well, not without me asking him to.” She barked her jackal-like laughter.
“That's not funny. Not after what I've been through.” Gretchen thought. “Probably not ever.”
She stood like a wallflower in the light drizzle next to Roz, her own bag heavy with posters and rolls of tape.
A group of NYU students, male, swaggered by and read the poster.
“Aww, man, no!”
“That sucks!”
“That jackass did that to a hot mama like you?”
Roz twirled around, beaming.
“Hey, you! Yeah, you! With the crotch! I bet you'd never do something crass like this! And those jeans of yours...would look better on my bedroom floor!”
Gretchen registered their whoops and hollers with a head bent in shame. Was she a prig? Did prigs ever have sex?
“Maybe, Roz,” she said, tugging her arm. “This is where we should part. Didn't you want to take West? And I'll take East?”
She pointed down Fourteenth Street.
“Yeah, okay. I guess we've plastered just about every vertical surface Union Square has. Will you be alright on your own?”
“What's that supposed to mean? I think I can handle putting up a few posters.”
“No, I mean...alone in public, with strange men, I mean, men you don't know, passing by. I don't know what it's like to go through...what you've been through.”
Would wonders never cease? Roz actually had a heart?
“Thanks,” Gretchen said, and she was grateful. “I'll be fine.”
“Okay, then,” Roz said, “Peace! Oh, and don't forget to leave a check for all the bills and rent.”
And her heels smacked down the sidewalk as Roz raced to catch up with the group of co-eds. When she was surrounded by them and laughing along with them, Gretchen was sure she wouldn't look back. She pulled off the poster Roz had just put up, then the one under it, and the one to the left. She felt better, sunnier, with every poster she tore down, the man's cadaver face crumpling up in her hand and tossed in the garbage. Everyone deserved a second chance. Maybe even M? No!
She rounded the corner, into a little alley-type thing that seemed as infrequently used as her own sexual urges nowadays. She ripped down all the posters there. When the walls were cleared of the poor man's face, Gretchen looked around to be certain there was nobody about. It was rare to find yourself alone in the middle of pulsating, teeming Manhattan, but she was lucky. She took out her phone and dialed that damn number again. When they answered, she let loose with another stream of expletives and vulgarities they deserved, then hung up. A smile brightened her face as she slipped the phone back into her pocket. She ran her fingers through her hair, wriggled her shoulders a little bit and bathed in the glow of satisfaction.
; Then she continued on, out the alley, past the wine store, the book store, the Starbucks, the Chipotle, the McDonald's, Duane Reade, Forever 21, a Subway, Urban Outfitters, another Chipotle, another Starbucks...
As she cleaned up the walls, she thought first about her latest flight, the one from Virginia to New Jersey the night before. It had been awful, a nightmare. She couldn't even tell Roz what she had done. She hoped she wouldn't get fired. She was waiting for Dennis to call her.
Then she wondered about David Lee Roth. He had been wearing scrubs. The hospital was a few blocks down from their apartment building, full of bullet wound victims, battered overweight children and crystal meth overdoses. Did he work there? Were these the people he saw on a daily basis? The most exciting scenario, of course, would be if he were a doctor, but, Gretchen considered, there were more people who wore scrubs, nurses and nurses aides, lab and X-ray technicians, orderlies, or were those the same as nurses? Then there were phlebotomists and ultra sound technicians, but weren't those usually women...? She had never watched many episodes of Grey's Anatomy.
She looked proudly at the bare wall before her. She turned around and stared through all the people rushing past. She checked out the walls. She couldn't see any more posters. There was a garbage can on the corner that, surprisingly, wasn't overflowing with cups and bottles and who knew what. She weaved her way through the passing throngs towards it, opened her bag and emptied all the posters inside. She threw away the bag.
Then she went inside the building and ordered a venti chamomile tea with lemon and honey. It was yet another Starbucks. There were so many on so many streets of Manhattan that if she hadn't really wanted to go to one and had just entered some door on a street at random, she would probably have ended up in one anyway. Gretchen, thinking of the check she would soon have to write Roz, opened her coin purse and paid with quarters, nickels and dimes. The girl behind the register rolled her eyes. Gretchen sat down by the window, perched on a stool reminiscent of Nickel and Dime's steats. Oh, what the hell! she thought as she took a steaming sip. Enough of this Nancy Drew stuff. Why don't I just call him, meet him and find out everything about him from his very own mouth.
Emergency Exit (The Irish Lottery Series Book 6) Page 10