Bad Habits

by Amy Gentry

  “Stop!”

  I pause and look back. Gwen stands below me on the eleventh-floor landing. In my single-minded trudging, I forgot I’m still a floor shy of the penthouse suite. I vow to correct that shortfall in time for next year’s conference and start back down, wincing as the reverse of direction turns my thighs to sacks of wet concrete. My knees almost buckle, and I lean on the railing, massaging my aching quadriceps. “Oof. I’m going to feel that in the morning.”

  “It’s already morning.”

  “That explains it.”

  Gwen holds the door open for me. Exiting the vertiginous stairwell feels like being released from a prison tower.

  I lead Gwen down the corridor to 1102. As we approach the door, a nagging feeling that’s been tickling lightly at my consciousness for some time becomes newly bothersome, like when a small piece of gravel in the toe of your boot shakes loose and slides under the soft arch. I pat my back pocket and pull out the two keys I’ve been carrying around—​the one I got from the desk downstairs marked “1102” and the naked card I assumed belonged to Harvard. I hope he got into his room all right. Or anyway, that he’s not still in mine.

  I shake it off and use my key, hesitating at the threshold as I peer into the dark room beyond. A tickle of apprehension crawls up the back of my neck. Something’s not right. It hasn’t been right all night long.

  “What is it?” Gwen asks in a hushed voice.

  “Nothing.” Irritated with myself, I walk in and hit the light switch. The dim glow from half a dozen lamps chases the shadows away, and I take in the whole suite at a glance. It’s empty. Harvard made the bed—​I note his shoddy attempt at hospital corners—​and even cleaned the empty mini-bottles from the nightstand, arranging my phone and my spare room key neatly on the nightstand. A letter of recommendation goes a long way in this job market.

  Gwen mistakes my silence for an invitation to comment. “What a lovely suite.” Despite the careful appreciation in her voice, I can see from her reflection in the floor-length windows that she’s thinking of something else. She’s been alternating between earnest oversharing and wary distance all night long. For the first time, it occurs to me that these confidences are not entirely spontaneous on her part. Perhaps they’re even designed to tempt me to spill my own secrets.

  We’ll see who breaks first.

  I stroll toward the fridge. “Let’s see what’s left in the minibar.”

  “I thought we were done drinking for the night.”

  “That was before I scaled Mount SkyLoft. I don’t know about you, but I’m thirsty.”

  Gwen shrugs.

  I squat by the fridge and open it, peering inside. “Stoli and a Red Bull. That’s what I’ve got. Unless you want to drink it straight.”

  “Red Bull, I guess.”

  “Suit yourself.” I crack open the miniature bottle of vodka and tip half into a water glass, flicking off the protective paper bonnet. Then I turn my attention to the Red Bull, pouring the fluorescent yellow heart-attack juice into the vodka until it looks like used paint thinner. I take a minute to wash my hands thoroughly at the bar sink before fishing a few slivers of half-melted ice from the ice bucket. When I turn around with the drink in one hand, half-full bottle in the other, Gwen sits cross-legged on the floor, her back leaning against the bed. I hand the concoction to her, and she takes a whiff and shudders.

  “Been a while since you’ve had vodka?”

  She glares.

  “What? You used to like it.” I sit down on the floor facing her.

  “I used to like a lot of things. We both did.” There it is, that hint of meanness that wasn’t there at the beginning of the night.

  I hoist the mini-bottle. “Still do. Bottoms up.”

  She sips and starts coughing.

  I tip the Stoli bottle back and drain it all at once, like a shot. Which is easy to do, since it’s filled with water. I tipped my share of the vodka into Gwen’s glass at the sink when she wasn’t looking.

  We sit in silence, trapped in our separate memories of the same evening.

  “So, you loved him.” I twiddle the empty bottle between my fingers. “Do you still?”

  “I love Andreas.”

  I lay the empty vodka bottle on the floor between us and spin it. The bottle is too small to hold its axis on the carpet, and it spins out and rolls a few feet away, pointing at the window.

  Gwen stares at it with an unreadable expression. “It would never have worked out with Rocky. Obviously.”

  I wait.

  “But I still think about him. About us. I picture us, at Yale or Stanford. He used to say he’d be the spousal hire, that I was brilliant enough for both of us.” She raises her eyes to mine, disgusted. “I’m not stupid. Imagine having to look his students in the eye during office hours, wondering which ones are curious girlfriends, there for a good look at the wife. I’d be working my ass off, while he coasted on charm. He’d always be staying up all night tippling at the bar with some venerable old Marxist, while I rushed home to take care of the baby.” She catches herself and blushes.

  “You weren’t . . . ?” I trail off.

  “No.” She’s angry, but only a small part of her anger is directed at me. “I told you we never slept together. I know you don’t believe me.”

  I do now, though. Vodka doesn’t lie. And, if I’m honest with myself, neither does Gwen. Omissions, yes. But Gwen has always been a terrible liar.

  “After everything happened and I left the Program, I used to wish I was—​you know. That’s how lost I was.” She looks at her empty glass. “Got any more of this stuff?”

  “I’m afraid we’re dry.”

  She gets up off the floor and walks to the window, a wobble in her step. Leans her forehead against the glass.

  “Why didn’t I invite you to the wedding? I don’t really know. Maybe it’s just that when I think about you, I remember what I was like then, when we were in the Program together. What I did. What I became. And I’m so ashamed.”

  I’ve been waiting for this moment. But just when I should push harder, take advantage of her vulnerability, I get distracted by something on the floor under the nightstand. A piece of trash, small and white. The pebble rattles in my shoe. I placate her. “None of us were at our best in grad school.”

  But she refuses to be deterred. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the people I hurt. I owe plenty of apologies. Most of all to you, Mac.”

  “What do you mean?” I see what it is. A paper sleeve. Probably for Harvard’s room key, the one I took by mistake. “Sorry for what?”

  “I got caught up in things. I—​I took things from you. I saw that you wanted them. And I took them.”

  She means the Joyner, I think distractedly. I reach under the nightstand and slide out the empty sleeve. I flip it over and nearly do a double take at the room number written on the back. The penthouse? Maybe I underestimated Harvard.

  Even more confusingly, staring at the sleeve has triggered another memory. I remember glancing down at the floor on my way into the room and seeing this sleeve, with the card in it, lying in the entry. But didn’t I find the card under the bed? The ticklish feeling begins again. So Harvard dropped his key by the door, and I kicked it coming in, and the card came out of the sleeve. That makes sense. It’s just odd, if he dropped it right after unlocking the door, that it would be in its sleeve like that.

  I make an effort to listen to Gwen, who’s still talking. “I shouldn’t even have been there. You wanted it so much more than I did. You needed it. I didn’t.”

  “I find ways of getting what I need.” There’s a word for that, I think.

  “Sometimes I think what happened that night was all my fault.”

  She watches me intently. Expecting me to protest, perhaps? Don’t blame yourself, Gwen. You were only the spark that lit the fuse—​you didn’t plant the powder keg. Or maybe it’s a confession she’s awaiting. Something she already knows but wants to hear me say out loud.r />
  Maybe the whole reason she’s here is to blackmail me.

  In that case, we’d better be getting on with the night. With the extra shot of vodka I slipped her, Gwen’s drunk enough for my purposes.

  “I think we could both use some air.”

  She looks around. “This place isn’t big enough for you?”

  “I mean real air. Outside. Let’s get out under the stars.”

  Her eyes widen in disbelief. “After all that, you want to go back downstairs?”

  “Not down. Further up.” I feel oddly happy, like a bird about to be let out of its cage. Gwen is staring, and I realize I’m fiddling with the paper sleeve, folding and unfolding it. I thrust it into my pocket. “To the roof.”

  It’s so much like what we used to do in high school—​an innocent flirtation with lawlessness, like breaking into the library’s sculpture garden after dark. At least, that’s what I’m hoping she’s thinking about. “Can we really get up there?”

  “I bet I can figure it out.”

  I find ways of getting what I need. The word for that is ruthless. Connor said it once, but he didn’t believe it. Bethany did too, and she meant it. But it was only tonight, when Gwen said it, that I knew beyond a doubt it was true.

  13

  By the time I reached the outskirts of Wheatsville, the snow had stopped falling, leaving hay-prickled fields of spectral blue that stretched for miles on either side of the highway in the early twilight. Empty fields soon gave way to lone gas stations on skinny farm roads, and then to pole-lit strip malls. A one-night stand in college who happened to be an architecture student had told me modern shopping centers were made of Styrofoam, the brick and stucco facades just a thin layer of plaster that could be updated easily with the changing styles. In Wheatsville, this optimism had been misplaced. The shopping strips, innocent of cosmetic improvements in my lifetime, were now studded with vacancies under dead neon.

  I drove past the old half-empty indoor mall and turned into my neighborhood, winding down the curved streets past a black pond with a thin rime of ice. There it was: split-level red brick sunk into a sloped lawn, surrounded with overgrown yew hedges. I parked on the street and went up the walk, peering through the window at Lily in her recliner, bathed in the warm glow of a cooking show. I could just see my mom banging around the kitchen, trailing smoke from the lit cigarette in her left hand. For some reason, that was the detail that got to me: that ragged slip of smoke pouring upward, splitting into strands that twined around each other like DNA.

  I knocked, and my mother opened the door.

  “Hi.” In a split second, I scanned her for signs. Pinpoint pupils, drowsy eyelids, broken capillaries from throwing up? No, no, and none that I could see. Her lit cigarette was perched on the doorframe, level with my face. Was she off-balance? Leaning too hard?

  She regarded me wryly through the veil of smoke. “To what do we owe this honor?”

  “Just a visit,” I said carefully. “I figured you could use help sorting out this Social Security thing.”

  “You think?” She stepped aside to let me in, flicking the cigarette on the stoop and waving at the smoke before she closed the door.

  I walked into the living room, a sea of stained wall-to-wall carpet.

  “Hey, Mac,” said Lily, without looking away from the TV.

  “Hey, Lily.” She’d need time to get used to me being here.

  So would I. I headed for my room, where I set my duffel bag on the bed and looked around. It was all still here: the crummy TV/VCR in the closet, the cigar box of cheap junk jewelry on the dresser, the shelves of sad paperbacks dredged from the library’s free box. Like the Styrofoam storefronts, my room was frozen at a time when everything had seemed possible.

  It was six o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, and dark as midnight. I lay down on the bed beside my duffel bag and fell into a deep, black sleep.

  * * *

  I woke up early, disoriented and groggy, struggling to remember where I was. Then the room settled around me with a thud. My room. The room I’d left four months ago, hoping, as I did every time, never to return.

  I shivered under the covers and stared at a water stain on the ceiling. The house was in bad shape. It needed a new roof, and the window frames were leaking. My first-floor bedroom, technically the master—​my mom slept across from Lily’s room upstairs—​had always been cold. Now it was also dank.

  There were a bunch of messages from Gwen and Connor on my phone. I thought of the glowing letter and ignored them all.

  The Social Security office was closed until Monday, so I had an entire day to fill. I started cleaning. As I mopped the kitchen floor, I fantasized about hiring a maid service for my mom’s house. But of course, if I left the Program and stayed in Wheatsville—​and where else would I go?—​I had a much better chance of working for a maid service than hiring one.

  I made my way into the living room, where Lily was watching a TV show about horses. A perfect time to check in.

  “What are you watching, Lily?” Open-ended questions still made her uncomfortable.

  “Horses of Hope,” she said, eyes fixed on the screen.

  “I haven’t heard of it. Is that a new one?”

  “It depends on what you mean by new. It’s on its third season. So technically, it’s not new. But the season is new.”

  I nodded, noting vaguely that Lily was feeling chattier than usual as I picked up candy wrappers and clothes from the floor. The carpet hadn’t been vacuumed in ages. “Do you like this season so far?” I asked tentatively. An opinion was a slightly riskier kind of question, but she clearly wanted to talk.

  “Season two had better horses. But I like this one because it’s close to where we live.”

  “Really?” I glanced at the screen. “How close?”

  “Eight point two miles away,” she answered readily. “Every season is at a different horse ranch, and this one is eight point two miles away.”

  A reality show on a horse ranch, filmed near Wheatsville. “What is the show about again?”

  “Equine therapy.” Her monotone sounded strained, and she started rocking a little. “For people like me.”

  I was dumbstruck. I had heard of equine therapy, but it always seemed exotic and remote. Why hadn’t I looked into it? “And you’re saying this place is close by?”

  “I wouldn’t be very good at it.”

  I tried not to sound too excited, to keep from agitating her. “Lily, do you want to try equine therapy?”

  She stared ahead of her at the screen, one hand flapping distractedly against the corded armchair.

  I went back to cleaning, filled with new resolve. I understood her perfectly. Lily wanted to ride horses. She wanted freedom. She couldn’t wait anymore. I’d had my shot, and now it was her turn.

  * * *

  Vacuuming in my room, I bumped into something under the bed: La Règle du jeu. The first movie Gwen and I had watched together.

  I threw the videotape in my bag. Time to get rid of it.

  The other video stores in town had long since closed their doors, but the Golden Crown was still there. Not so the Frogurt Palace next door, which was now a pawnshop. While I was there, I’d pawn my earrings. As long as I was shedding my illusions, might as well get some cold hard cash for them.

  But first, the Golden Crown. Faced with the front door, I was seized with a sudden urge to go around back to the concrete stairs that led to the basement apartment where I’d spent so many afternoons with Trace and the Kevins, stoned to the gills. Instead, I pushed open the swinging door, flinching at the jangling doorbell, and hurried nervously past the security camera.

  Behind the red Formica counter plastered with peeling comix and store policies, an open doorway led down a dark flight of stairs to Quimby’s basement. The call bell clicked dully when I rang it. I picked at a corner of tape on the counter and considered leaving.

  Then the basement door opened, and Quimby’s pale, thinning hair appeared,
followed by his familiar old rusty blazer, and then finally Quimby himself, huffing and puffing like a demon from the deep. He paused in the doorway in his chili-patterned chef pants and wheezed for a moment as he looked me up and down. At last, he rasped, in a voice like day-old coffee grounds, “Jennifer, I’ve been expecting you.”

  “You—​you have?”

  He shook his head and coughed. “No. It’s from The Matrix Reloaded.” I could see as he lumbered toward the counter that he was fully stoned. “Well? What, as they say, can I do you for?”

  I considered asking for a hit of whatever had made the blood vessels pop in his watery blue eyes, but instead I plunked the video in its plastic case down on the counter. “Just returning this.”

  “Ah.” He leaned forward an inch and peered down at the handwritten title. “That would be, what, five years overdue? We haven’t carried VHS for a while.”

  “Six years, ten months. Hell of a late fee.”

  “Forget it. It was a dub.”

  “Thanks.”

  He held the videocassette up to his ear and rattled it like a present. “Was it everything you’d hoped for, Jennifer? Did your dreams come true? Tell me, how has life treated you?”

  I felt suddenly exhausted. “I went to grad school, but I’m dropping out. I have to stick around and help my family.” It was the first time I’d said the words out loud to anyone, and I only said them to Quimby because he was more like a ghost than an actual person to me. “I worked so hard. But I blew it. I lost the Joyner, and I lost my friends, and I blew it. So here I am.” I summed it up, with a gesture meant to encompass the movie store, the town, my whole pathetic life.

  But Quimby, who had set the tape back down on the counter, frowned. “Joyner, that crook from the savings and loan crisis?”

  Trust Quimby to find a tangent. I shook my head. “It’s the name of some big fellowship.”

  “Probably the same guy,” he said amicably. He pulled a stack of DVDs from the return bin, opened a case, checked the disc, and started typing something into the ancient PC on the counter. “Want to rent something while you’re here? Viridiana?”