by Emma Straub
“I told you. My friend Katherine,” she said, “she got me in trouble for getting her in trouble, basically. She met a guy who turned out to be something else. Like, a grown-up. And I told because I didn’t want her to get murdered, and then she accused me of bullying her, even though I wasn’t. And now she’s still getting me in trouble, which was the whole reason my parents wanted me to come here, so that it would just be over, erased, as if life works that way. Why do I know that and they don’t? It’s like, guys, the internet exists. The internet doesn’t care what zip code you’re in. There is literally no escape. Maybe Antarctica.”
August shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“I’m going to do the Parade Crew.” Cecelia folded the note back up and put it into her backpack. She didn’t want to throw it away and have the librarian find it and start the whole thing all over again.
“Okay,” August said. “I’ll do it with you.”
“Really? Thank you. You are a good friend. Thank you,” Cecelia said. She crossed her ankles and watched Elizabeth Taylor lean against a doorframe. She looked like she wanted to push the opposite button. Rewind. Wash it all off and start again. Maybe someday Cecelia would want that, too, but not today.
Chapter 24
Hot Time in the City
After they put Cecelia on the train, Nicky had taken a cab to JFK, where he was scheduled to fly to Albuquerque, with a layover in Dallas, but as soon as he walked through security, Nicky knew he couldn’t go. He turned around, pulling his small wheeled suitcase behind him, and went to the back of the taxi line. Being apart from Cecelia was strange enough; he didn’t want to be apart from Juliette too. The two of them walked around the apartment in circles for days, dueling somnambulists, avoiding conversation but happy for the companionship. Finally Nicky did what he always did when he felt terrible—he went to the Russian baths on Tenth Street and tried to sweat it all out. When he was in Taos, Nicky liked to drive out to the banks of the Rio Grande, where there were natural hot springs, small, stone-lined pools of hot water; but there was no calming river in New York City, no empty, quiet space, and so instead Nicky took the train into Manhattan and walked to the East Village and traded his street clothes for a pair of one-size-fits-all shorts and a shvitz.
He’d first come to the baths during college, in between when he shot The Life and Times of Jake George and when the movie was released eight months later. It was Jerry Pustilnik’s idea, the actor who played his father in the movie, who had played the father to half a dozen other teenage heartthrobs, as well as scores of police detectives, and criminals of several denominations, due to his mirthful belly and round cheeks, which could look either stern or menacing. Jerry went to the baths every week he was in the city, and he told young Nicky that it was a life-changing experience, and so they made a date to go. Nicky brought his bathing suit in his backpack, not knowing what to expect, but before long they were surrounded by Russian Jews with bellies that made Jerry’s look petite. In one of the saunas, Jerry paid a guy ten dollars to smack his back with giant oak leaves and then they ate pickles and borscht, Jerry’s skin now electric red, and Nicky was sure that Jerry had been right. The purposeful discomfort—in a community setting, no less!—had a numbing effect on the mind, because all you could think about was how every drop of water in your body was trying to come out.
The space had been upgraded slightly, but there was no removing the smell of mildew, which clearly lived behind every tile and beneath every floorboard. Faucets ran twenty-four hours a day, cold water to splash on yourself when the heat became unbearable. It was still mostly bare bones, despite the much-changed demographic of the East Village and despite the burly Russian man who had taken his money at the door. The shorts were the same, and though it didn’t seem possible—Nicky hadn’t been in at least six months, maybe a year—he recognized the faces and bodies of some of the men in the sauna room. He lay his towel flat and then stretched his body out on top of it. It was a co-ed day, no one’s favorite except the rich guys who came with their model girlfriends, couples for whom physical discomfort and awkwardness seemed part of the plan. It was too hot for human bodies, and so the sweat just came. The true-blue bathers covered their chests and legs with a layer of Vaseline, making it even harder for the sweat to push through. Nicky closed his eyes and breathed, every cell in his body telling him that this was a very bad idea. That was part of the pleasure of it, fighting against the urge to leave, but he’d spent the last twenty years meditating, and this was the same thing. Sit with the discomfort. Sit with yourself. Just sit.
When he was eighteen, Nicky’s body could do anything—he could run for miles without tiring, he could play a new sport adequately well having only just learned the rules. He wasn’t competitive but loved team sports—when he first saw Juliette dance, the night they met, at an engagement party for mutual friends who were now divorced, she and her friends danced with such total abandon, their arms and legs poking and sweeping and jutting and shaking all to make one another and themselves laugh, he understood. He had understood her, the way she moved through the world, body first.
They had come here together, from time to time, though Nicky came less often when the demographics of the place began to change faster. He liked the assortment of ages and bodies, the Hasids, the union guys who came after working all night, each of them trying to burn something out from under their skin. When he first came with Jerry, Nicky was sweating out grief—his father’s death had been sudden and his mother’s response was like closing a door to keep out the chill. It was done; it was over. There was no meaningful discussion. When their teachers had pushed for some sort of family counseling, Astrid had rolled her eyes but acquiesced, clearly just to check it off the list, and to satisfy the due diligence. Nicky remembered what the room had been like—a dark purple corduroy couch, a glass coffee table with a box of tissues sitting in the middle, some cracked-leather chairs on the opposite side. Porter and Nicky had sat together in one corner of the couch, with Astrid perched forward on the far end and Elliot across from them in a chair, bouncing his knees. Nicky and Porter had curled into each other’s bodies and sobbed. Only the therapist had thought to slide the box of tissues within their reach.
Acting had never been particularly interesting to Nicky, but it was something he could do. He could remember lines, and he could speak in public, in dark rooms, with a light pointed at his face. The eighth-grade performance of South Pacific had been spotty—Jamie Van Dusen, who played Nellie, had a thin, timid voice and gave a little half chuckle whenever she was about to break into song, as if in acknowledgment that she knew she wasn’t going to be terrific, but she was going to do her best. After the performance, Russell had rushed up to Nicky, leaving Astrid and Porter with the flowers, and embraced him. Nicky could feel his father’s warm breath in his ear, could still hear him say, “Son, that was wonderful,” as if the wondrousness wasn’t due to Rodgers or Hammerstein but as if he, Nicholas Strick, were solely responsible. Encouragement could do anything. Encouragement and a natural inclination. Russell could have encouraged Porter to be an actress every day of her life and she still would have turned beet red and tried to swallow her own tongue at the prospect. Nicky admitted that much, that there was something in him, some true match that his father had seen. After that, Nicky was in everything: My Fair Lady, RENT, Our Town, The Crucible. And when his high school drama teacher recommended Nicky audition for a film, Russell slapped his hands together. He knew Nicky would get the part—they were looking for a charmer, a flirt, someone who half the audience would pretend to kiss in their bedrooms at night and the other half would imitate in the halls at school. Russell would have loved the movie, though it was passable at best, and now seemed horribly dated. But Russell would have loved seeing his son’s face in People magazine. Imagine, Nicky Strick, in every dentist’s waiting room in the country! Russell would have tapped strangers on the shoulder. He would have beamed. Instead, he’d died in between
filming and the release, suspended in the time when anything could happen, or nothing could happen. Russell would have been proud either way.
Someone touched Nicky on the foot, and he opened his eyes. It was a young man with a blond buzz cut.
“Massage?” he asked. Everyone who worked at the baths was related to everyone else—Jerry Pustilnik had told Nicky the whole saga once, how it had been owned by brothers who had had a falling-out, and how they now ran the space on different days, how if you bought a ticket from Dmitri, you could only use it on Dmitri days, that his brother, Ivan, would frown and turn you away. The rest of the staff were members of their family that remained agnostic, like so many children of divorce. This young man was someone’s nephew or cousin. Nicky had always wanted that kind of family, so big that you could never quite work out if you were someone’s second cousin or third cousin once removed, because it didn’t matter, you were family, and that was the only label that counted. But you needed so many people on board to make that happen, generations of joiners, and the Stricks were not that.
“No thanks,” Nicky said, and the young man moved on to the next potential victim. Across the room, Nicky watched two young women murmur to each other—they were closer to Cecelia’s age than his, much closer. Cecelia, who’d been an adult all her life. Astrid had been horrified when he’d told her that they let Cecelia take the subway by herself when she was ten years old, but Cecelia was ready! She was cautious, she paid attention, she never fell asleep on the D train and woke up in Coney Island like he’d done in college. That’s why the whole thing with her school and her friends had been so confusing—as if, after so many years, he and Juliette had the blindfold pulled off and were shown that Cecelia was, in fact, only a child. They’d never thought of her that way before.
Nicky couldn’t say precisely what Cecelia had done. Her best friend, Katherine, had said that they’d met someone on the internet. She and Cecelia, together. That they had chatted with a man, who they thought was a boy. That they had gone to his apartment. Cecelia said she hadn’t but Katherine said that she had, and then Cecelia said she’d gone but waited outside, or picked Katherine up, and she had known, she had known all along, and just the fact that this could happen, that there were local men impersonating teenagers in a place (the internet) where they could interact with his daughter was too much. Nicky did what any parent would have done: He pulled the rip cord and got her out of there. Was that better or worse than leaving her in a toxic puddle, no matter who made it? You couldn’t ask kids to change. You could sooner change the weather.
Nicky knew better than to blame. You could expect only so much from anyone, even parents. Maybe even especially one’s parents, the people who cared the very most, and who saw themselves so much in every reflection. When the movie came out, Nicky had just moved into the dorms at NYU, as if his life had anything in common with the way it had been a year earlier, when he’d applied to schools. He was a boy about town, trying to fill the hole left by his father with whatever he could put into his mouth: with body parts attached to beautiful girls, with endless joints, with bullshit party small talk, shouting over the DJ at Don Hill’s while young actresses danced around him, all of them starring in a live production of This Is Fun, We’re Having Fun, staged around the city twenty-four hours a day.
The director of Jake George, a midwesterner with large, square glasses, had told Nicky that he wanted to introduce him to a friend of his, a director who made artsier films. The friend—Robert Turk, a legend already, though he’d made only three movies—had seen some early footage from Jake George and loved Nicky. Phone numbers were exchanged and Robert called Nicky on a Friday night and said he was having a small party, nothing fancy, just a few friends. Nicky changed his clothes three times before getting on the subway uptown.
Robert Turk lived in a doorman building on West End Avenue and Eightieth Street. The lobby was white marble, with one attendant at the door and another behind a desk, both wearing uniforms and hats.
“Hi,” Nicky said. “I’m here for the party? Turk?”
The men didn’t smile but nodded toward the elevator. “Sixth floor, end of the hall on the right.”
It was ten o’clock. Nicky could remember, only a year ago, when ten o’clock would be closer to the end of a party than the beginning. He had a couple of joints in his wallet, because he knew it was rude to show up to a party without anything, but his fake ID was for shit, and he didn’t know any of the delis uptown and didn’t want to risk it. It might not be a pot kind of party, but it might, and it never hurt to be prepared. When Turk had called, he told Nicky not to bring a posse, because it was an exclusive party, and so Nicky had come alone. He didn’t mind. Everyone was always alone, anyway, whether they realized it or not.
Nicky knocked on the door, 6E. Someone shouted to come in, and so he turned the doorknob and pushed. The apartment was more modern than he’d expected—low lights, spotless surfaces, framed movie posters on all the walls.
“Hello?” Nicky called. He took a few tentative steps down the hall.
“Hey,” Robert Turk poked his head out of a doorway. “In here.”
Nicky took off his backpack and set it down in the hall. He wrung his hands together. “Am I too early?” He got to the doorway and saw it was a narrow galley kitchen. The windows overlooked a courtyard and all the other apartments. They were all lit up like Christmas trees, and almost none had curtains, as if everyone in the building had tacitly agreed that light was more important than privacy. Robert handed Nicky a glass of wine.
“I know; it’s better than television,” he said. He clinked his glass against Nicky’s and took a long sip. “I’m so glad you came.”
There was no one else there, it was clear. Nicky drank his glass of wine and looked at the books on Robert’s bookshelves and tried to understand if what was happening was weird or not. His cheeks were feeling flushed already. Robert was walking around behind him, watching him, from two feet away, the way you sometimes walked the same path as an animal at a zoo, to get a better look, to see what they looked like from other angles. “Can I make a quick phone call?” Nicky asked. “I’m sorry, I forgot, I was supposed to call my girlfriend, she’s going to be so pissed, do you mind?”
Robert pointed toward a bedroom. “There’s a phone in there. Go for it.” He settled onto a couch and crossed one ankle over a knee.
Nicky ducked into the room and shut the door behind him. He didn’t have a girlfriend. He picked up the phone and called his mother.
“It’s practically midnight,” Astrid said, after Nicky had identified himself, his hand cupped around the phone. “What’s going on?”
“I’m at this director’s apartment,” Nicky said. “I don’t know, he said it was a party, but it’s just me, and it’s kind of weird.”
“Okay.” Astrid must have been in bed already, reading a book. Nicky could picture her, eyes closed, the book tented open on her middle.
“Do you think I should leave?”
“You’re an adult, Nicky! How should I know? Do you want to leave?”
“I don’t know.” He wanted her to tell him to leave. He wanted her to tell him that she would call a car service and have it waiting downstairs, that he should run if he wanted to, that his comfort was her fire alarm, that there was nothing to be afraid of, that she was there, always awake and waiting, like when he was little and woke up in the middle of the night with a bad dream. “I don’t know what I want you to say.”
Astrid laughed. “Nicky, sweetheart, I’m going to sleep. I trust you. Have a drink! It’ll be fine.”
Nicky opened the bedroom door and Robert smiled. He shifted on the couch, and Nicky could see a tentpole in his jeans, poking skyward.
“She’s super pissed,” Nicky said. He set his wineglass down on the coffee table. “I should go.”
“Are you sure?” Robert stroked his inseam with a finger. “I’d really l
ike to get to know you better, Nick. I think we could do some really great stuff together. And we could get started right now.” He gave half a wink, and Nicky understood that he did this all the time, and that it usually worked.
“Yeah, thank you, thanks, I’m sure.” Nicky scooped up his bag and held it against his chest as he hurried back toward the elevator. It took forever to come, and his heart was beating so loud that he thought Robert might be able to hear it from inside the apartment.
It was windy on West End when he pushed past the doorman, and Nicky pulled his coat shut as he ran to Broadway. He didn’t know why he was running. He could call Jerry, or a friend, but why? All his life, people had treated Nicky like a paper doll, something they could dress up or down, a cute, flat toy. It didn’t matter what he wanted, not really—he had become an actor because his father had had tears in his eyes. He had become a movie star because he’d gotten the part. He had danced and kissed beautiful girls because they were beautiful but mostly because they were doing the same thing that he was doing, pretending that the roles they were given had been doled out fairly, that they had any choice in the matter. Photographers snapped pictures of his hand on a model’s thigh, and then they were dating, and then she was his girlfriend, and then they’d broken up, all before they’d shared a meal or knew the names of each other’s siblings.
The Russian baths were slick and salty, every surface wet. Nicky’s pores were wide open. He could feel it all coming out, every angry feeling, every time he’d let himself down by saying yes instead of saying no. He watched himself storm out of that apartment a hundred times before he opened his eyes, and through all the steam and heat watched himself sit down next to Robert and let him play paper dolls. Nicky didn’t know then if he’d ever be a parent, if he’d ever get married, anything like that—but he did know that if he did, if he did, he would always listen for the tiny voice inside the big voice, and try to answer all the questions, the ones being asked and the questions hiding behind. Nicky pushed himself up to standing, filled up his bucket, and poured ice cold water over his head. It was time to go.