“You going to the town or the school?” the cabbie asked.
“I’m stayin’ here.” Lexie slid across the seat and opened the door.
“You sure?” The cabbie looked like Bert, Lexie thought. Or maybe it actually was Bert. Was he driving cabs in Western Massachusetts? But wait. Bert was dead. Right?
“You’re the same age as Daniel,” Lexie said, to imaginary Bert. “Tha’s kinda gross, huh?”
“You okay?” The cabbie asked.
“Yup.” Lexie put her shod foot on the gravel and half hopped and half limped back to the bar. She opened the door and peered in. Celeste and Peter were sitting where Lexie and Amy had sat. She was holding a martini glass to his mouth and he was taking a sip.
Celeste lowered the glass and wiped Peter’s lips with her fingertips. The gesture was intimate, tender. Peter leaned in and kissed Celeste. Lexie gasped.
The door opened behind Lexie and a large man with a large head and a beard that grew out into a trapezoid appeared at her back. “In or out?”
“Huh?” Lexie’s couldn’t stop watching Peter and Celeste.
“You coming or going?” The man’s head nodded up and down as he examined Lexie from stem to stern.
“Goin’ where?”
“Are you leaving the bar or entering it?” He unabashedly stared at Lexie’s breasts. As if he were about to bite her there.
“I hafta watch my ex-fiancé with the very beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Celeste.”
“Why?”
“To see how I blew it.”
“You didn’t blow it with him. I’ll fucking marry you.” Again the man’s eyes roved Lexie’s body, as if assessing a purchase.
“ZZ Top,” Lexie mumbled. The mind/mouth passageway was too drenched to create sentences for what she was thinking. If she had been better able to speak, Lexie would have said she was worried that guys like the one speaking to her now, whom she thought resembled someone in the band ZZ Top, would be all she’d have to choose from in the future. Compounding this fear was a belief that her social life, henceforth, would be spent in sweaty bars playing Donkey Kong.
“Yeah, I like ZZ Top, too, so let’s fucking get married.”
“I cheat.” She looked back at Peter and saw that he was staring at her, a pained look on his face. Celeste pivoted to see what he was looking at and her jacket swung open. She wasn’t wearing a satin skirt; she was in Lexie’s wedding dress.
Lexie turned and rushed out the door. “I don’t care if you cheat as long as I get you in the sack every day!” the guy shouted after her.
Lexie stagger-hopped around the parking lot, looking for her car. She talked to Peter, though she knew he couldn’t hear. “Didn’t leave you for ZZ Top . . . that dress looks cute with boots . . .” The gravel hurt her bare foot more than when she’d left the bar the first time. She needed a shoulder to hold her up; she needed a human crutch.
The Jetta was hidden between two giant SUVs and so it took Lexie much longer to find it than it should have in a parking lot of only fifteen cars. Upon discovering it, Lexie clicked the lock, got in, and started the engine.
18
LEXIE LIFTED THE FAKE ROCK IN THE FRONT GARDEN AND TOOK out the key to the Waites’ lake house. She let herself in the front door, dropped the key into her purse, and started wandering, flicking on lights as she went. First stop: living room. There had been a few framed pictures on the grand piano when she and Daniel had spent the week there. Tonight there were three or four times as many. Half of them were pictures of Daniel and Jen.
Lexie slipped her purse off her shoulder and swept her arm across the piano top, sending the pictures to the ground. She pushed the heel of her single sandal into one of the frames. The glass refused to crack. She pushed harder and toppled to the ground. Lexie lay still and looked up at the ceiling. It was coffered, pristine white, with not a single visible crack. In all her life, Lexie had never lived in a room that didn’t have at least one crack in the ceiling.
She rolled up to sitting, picked up the picture closest to her and stared at it. Jen and Daniel on the boat, the wind blowing Jen’s hair into a long blond mustache across Daniel’s face. Both of them laughing. Lexie threw the picture across the room. It landed on the carpet, intact.
Lexie crawled across the floor and gathered the photos into one pile. Then she held on to the leg of the piano and pulled herself up to standing. One by one, Lexie lifted the photos off the carpet and tried to arrange them the way they had been.
Once that was done, Lexie picked up her purse and hobbled toward Jen’s bedroom. Or, she amended in her head, the bedroom she had been told where Jen slept alone. She pushed open the door and turned on the light. The bed was perfectly made. It looked like a showroom bed—everything white and pale blue, pillows just so. Lexie imagined it smelled like lavender, or lilacs, or something else pure and fresh.
“I hate you, Daniel Waite.” Lexie wobbled to the bed, dropped her purse onto the floor and stared at the pillows. “Fuck you!” She threw the pillows, one by one, onto the floor. Then she fell to her knees, crawled across the floor, and tossed each pillow back to the bed. Most of them made the target. When they didn’t, she kept trying until they did.
Lexie stood and surveyed her work. It was difficult to remember how the pillows had been arranged when she had walked in. For a good five minutes Lexie adjusted and readjusted the pillows. How did people know how to do bed pillows? When did you get that lesson?
The master bathroom felt overly opulent and impossibly clean. There were two separate toilet rooms off the white marble room. It was like a mausoleum. Lexie pulled out her phone and took a picture. Without thinking, she texted the picture to Betsy Simms and wrote, like a mooosalini.
Lexie walked into the closest toilet room. It contained a toilet and a shiny silver toilet paper roll. She walked into the second one. That one contained a toilet, a shiny silver toilet paper roll, and a silver magazine rack that had Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Law Review, and several copies of a slim little magazine called Bottom Line.
“LIAR!” Lexie kicked the magazine rack with her bare foot. It felt like a hammer had been swung into her toe. Lexie screamed and held the throbbing toe. “I hate you!”
Lexie returned to the first toilet room where she sat and peed. She may have fallen asleep because suddenly she had the sensation of waking up. She grabbed a wad of toilet paper to wipe and realized she’d failed to pull down her underwear. Lifting her hips, she awkwardly worked off the wet panties, then wiped, flushed, and left the panties like a washed-up red rodent at the base of the toilet.
There were two sinks and seven mirrored doors across the vanity in the main part of the bathroom. Lexie washed her hands, then opened each door in order. In the first cabinet was Daniel’s stuff: deodorant, saline nasal spray, L’Occitane aftershave, Prada cologne. She picked up the bottle of cologne and tossed it onto the marble floor. It made a chinking sound but miraculously didn’t break.
Lexie went to the cabinet that held Jen’s makeup. She considered putting it on, and then thought better of it. She’d already applied makeup before leaving Rilke. She didn’t need more.
The last medicine cabinet held prescription pill bottles, cortisone creams, eyedrops. Lexie rotated each bottle until she could read the label. There was nothing familiar or interesting. Until she found the Klonopin. The dosage was the same as Lexie’s prescription, .05. She opened the bottle and dry-swallowed a pill. She poured the rest into her hand, looked around the bathroom for her purse, and then stuffed them down her bra. The pills tickled her skin. She put the lid back on. Inexplicably, she licked the outside of the bottle before returning it to the medicine cabinet, exactly where she’d found it.
Lexie left the bathroom and surveyed the bedroom. She was looking for something, but she couldn’t remember what. Her purse! It was on the floor by the side of the bed. She had every intention of removing the Klonopin from her bra and sticking them in the internal pocket of her purse, but inste
ad she dove onto the bed face-first.
With her head resting on one cheek, Lexie stared at the bedside table. The wood was so shiny she could almost see her reflection. Who polished it? The gay housekeepers? Were there really gay housekeepers or had that been a lie, too?
Lexie reached out and opened the drawer in the bedside table. She leaned over and peered inside. A large rubber vibrator shaped like an exclamation point rested beside a glass jar of earplugs.
“But why?” Daniel had told Lexie that when Jen went through menopause two years ago, she’d lost interest in sex. That was one of the reasons, he claimed, their marriage fell apart. Lexie picked up the vibrator, rolled onto her back, lifted her dress, pushed the on button, and pressed the rubbery wand against herself. She could barely feel it. She imagined her body as a lump of molded lard.
Lexie gave up, lifted the vibrator to her face and sniffed at it. She rolled to her stomach and rubbed her nose back and forth into the pillow, as if to rub off whatever bodily juices may have infected her. The vibrator felt like a small hand weight as she dropped it toward the gaping bedside drawer. It missed and landed in her sack purse instead.
Lexie rolled to her back and kicked her arms and legs out in a letter X. “I’m cavorting on your bed.” She looked to the side of the bed that belonged to Daniel and started crying. The sadness inside Lexie ran like a wash cycle: circling, swirling, rotating, swishing. It came straight out of her mouth, eyes, and nose, everything wet and running. Lexie wanted to flip a switch and shut it all down.
And somehow she did. Lexie flipped the switch. And the light in her head didn’t turn on again until the moment she was awakened by Jen Waite.
19
I’M SO, SO SORRY,” LEXIE SAID TO JEN. IN HER HEART SHE WAS sorry for much more than having fallen asleep on the bed.
They were at the open front door. Daniel was halfway across the stone, circular driveway, headed toward Lexie’s car.
“Excuse my husband,” Jen said. “We landed in Boston from Athens and drove two hours to get here because he wanted to wake up on the lake and . . . I think he’s a little jet-lagged and cranky.” Jen formed a pouty face, like she was talking about her child.
“Did you have a good trip?” Lexie hoisted the purse higher on her shoulder.
“It was our anniversary so, you know, we went for the romantic thing, a European cruise.”
“That’s so nice.” Lexie forced herself to smile.
“If we find your shoe, I’ll drive it to campus for you.” Jen pointed at Lexie’s bare foot.
“I’m almost certain I left the apartment without it.” Lexie stepped off the porch and onto the driveway. “Ambien! That stuff’s supercrazy, right?!”
Jen smiled and waved, and Lexie hobbled to her car. Daniel opened the door. The keys were sitting in the ignition. He shut the car door once Lexie was seated, but stood there as solid and firm as a steel column. She turned on the car and rolled down the window. Daniel leaned his head in. He pointed toward the road. Lexie figured he was making it look like he was giving her directions home. “The fuck are you doing here?” Daniel whisper-yelled.
“I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”
“It was a mistake that you took an Ambien, drove to my house, and went to sleep on the bed I share with my wife?” Daniel was actually gritting his teeth. Lexie felt disoriented, as if maybe this wasn’t Daniel. Her Daniel didn’t share a bed with his wife. Her Daniel loved her and wanted to marry her. Her Daniel had that very morning sent her a text from Asia saying he missed her so much his gums hurt!
“You said you were in China and wouldn’t be home until Monday.”
“I said I’d call you on Monday. I didn’t say when I’d be home.”
“I thought you were separated. I thought you had told her about me. I thought you loved me.”
“We’ll talk about this later.” Daniel stepped back from the car, pointed toward the road once more, then turned and walked away.
Lexie rolled up the window. She watched Daniel shoulder his way past Jen Waite, who remained in the doorway, staring at Lexie.
Lexie lifted her left hand to wave and knocked her knuckles against the glass. She gasped and nervously laughed. Once she’d put the car in drive it took immense concentration to stay within the borders of the driveway.
Lexie edged the car slowly forward until she was closer to the house. Right in front of Jen Waite, who was watching her the way you might watch a bobcat prance across your lawn. Lexie waved again—with deliberate control so she wouldn’t knock the window. Then she putted past Jen and out onto the road.
A couple minutes later, Lexie pulled over. She rolled down the window and hung out her hair. Then she rolled up the window, keeping as much hair trapped against the frame as possible. It was a trick she’d seen a friend do in college, a way to be jerked awake if you accidentally nodded off while driving. Naturally, for the system to work, your head would have to fall forward or toward the passenger seat. A tilt to the left and you’d have to hope that the bonk against the glass would wake you.
Lexie talked while she drove. “That’s a stop sign, so stop . . . Daniel doesn’t love me . . . yellow line to the left . . . he’s been lying to me all along . . . yellow line to the left . . .” Pangs of breath went in and out in short, uneven spanks. The idea of crying flashed in Lexie’s head, but the whooshing fogginess of the last Klonopin tablet blotted out her ability to cry. It was like Lexie’s heartbreak, shame, and shock were in a bottle floating out in the ocean, a couple yards ahead of her. Every time Lexie swam toward the bottle, trying to reach it, a giant wave slapped her down and washed her clean of even the idea of it. She could no longer get close enough to her feelings to experience them.
Back on campus, the walk from the parking lot to Rilke proved difficult. Lexie tripped and plummeted to the ground on the brick pathway. Her purse fell off her shoulder and the vibrator tumbled out. Lexie put the vibrator back in her bag and then rolled to her back and looked at the starry sky. It was well past midnight, past curfew; any student who was out of his or her dorm room would be hiding so as not to be seen by faculty.
Lexie kicked off the remaining sandal and watched it sail into the hedge beside her. She noticed a thin line of blood running down her knee. With her knee bent, Lexie lifted her head and licked the wound. When she pulled away, blood appeared again, like a Magic Marker that couldn’t be erased. Lexie licked her knee once more before rolling over and hoisting herself upright.
When she reached the front door of the building, Lexie spotted Ethan Waite sprinting across the lawn. He didn’t see her until he scrambled to a stop.
“Shit.” Ethan bent over his knees to catch his breath.
“I have no idea what time it is, but I know it’s past curfew.” Lexie tried to adjust her face into that of a stern disciplinarian.
Ethan straightened and stared at her. He appeared more like a hologram than an actual person: his face shifting back and forth between himself and Daniel. “Can we talk about this before you write me up?”
“Sure.” So much for the disciplinarian. The tip of the vibrator jutted out of Lexie’s purse again. She shook it down. “Do you have your key card?”
“Yeah.” Ethan pulled his ID from his pocket and scanned open the door. He followed Lexie down the hall to her apartment. Lexie blindly rummaged through her purse, searching for her keys. When she found them, she unlocked the door.
“You okay?” Ethan followed Lexie into the apartment.
“It’s only a little blood.”
“What blood?”
“Oh, my temperature?” Lexie turned around so she was facing Ethan. He had been closer behind her than she had realized. Their chests almost touched.
“No, you were sort of wobbling.”
“Was I?” She had thought she had her body fairly under control. Lexie looked toward the chair. She didn’t want to cross the room to it, or the couch, lest she wobble even more.
“Yeah. Are you drunk?” Ethan started laug
hing.
“I think you’re drunk,” Lexie said, trying to distract him.
“Not as drunk as you.” Ethan stuck his finger out as if to point and gently poked Lexie right at her collarbone, directly above her heart.
“Oh, shit, I think you’re right.” Lexie wobbled to her sleek gray couch and sat. “Don’t tell anyone that you were with me and I was drunk.” She leaned forward and licked her bleeding knee again. This time, the blood didn’t reappear.
“I’d never tell.” Ethan dropped down beside her. They were silent for a few seconds. Then Ethan said, “I’m glad we picked this couch.”
“Yeah, you decorated the whole apartment with me.” They lifted their heads and simultaneously looked from side to side, like a pair of birds.
“Where are your shoes?”
“Ha!” Lexie lifted one leg and pointed her toe. Ethan dropped to his knees on the floor and captured the moving foot as if it were a jumping fish. The tickling sensation felt so bubbly and good that Lexie forgot she was miserable.
“Your foot is filthy.” Ethan held Lexie’s leg aloft.
“I’m filthy.”
“I’m serious! You have to see the bottom of your foot. It’s completely black!”
Lexie tried to bend her leg to see her foot, but Ethan had a firm grip. She went for another tactic and bent her body to see the foot in Ethan’s hand but tumbled off the couch, landing on the floor beside Ethan. They broke apart laughing, each of them lying on their back, side by side.
“Oh my god,” Lexie said. “I had such a shitty night. I can’t tell you how good it feels to laugh.”
“Me, too.”
“Oh yeah, your birthday.” Lexie turned to one side and looked at Ethan. In profile he was less Daniel and more Ethan, although there was a soluble wavering happening.
“I’m eighteen now.”
“Yup. Prison. Cigarettes.”
“And I can buy porn.”
The Trouble with Lexie Page 22