James raises his eyes, looks at me. “Well, I guess if you really thought I was such a terrible person, you wouldn’t be here, would you?”
“I don’t think you’re a terrible person.” I wonder if he believes me. I wonder if I believe myself. Maybe, deep down, we’re both terrible people. “Why’d you run?” I ask suddenly. “Why’d you take the gun?”
James shakes his head, stares at something on the floor. “I panicked,” he says finally. “I was literally having a fucking panic attack in the backseat of that cop’s car, thinking about being shut up in some cell. I just . . .” He bites his lower lip. “Remember that time when I told you I was afraid of the dark? Well, I’m afraid of small spaces, too. Of being locked up. It was something my father used to do to me when I was little. Throwing me in the coat closet in the hall and locking the door was his idea of punishment. He’d force my mother out of the house so she couldn’t help me, and then come back an hour, sometimes three hours, later—I never knew how long it was going to be—and let me out again. One time, he kept me in there for two days. Two fucking days. I cried for so long and so hard that I literally passed out.” He pauses, his face slick with sweat around the edges. “Anyway, small spaces—small, dark spaces—make me crazy. I knew I’d lose it once they locked that jail door behind me. And I didn’t mean to take the gun. It fell out of the holster when the guy and I were wrestling, and I . . . I just grabbed it.”
I don’t say anything. What is there to say? Does knowing these new details about him make his actions any easier to understand? To forgive? Or am I just looking for excuses?
A noise downstairs causes us both to freeze. Soft footsteps are followed by the squeak of a pew, a heavy sigh.
“How many of them are still down there?” James asks.
I peek over the banister slowly, scan the emptiness below. There are four figures huddled in the front, a few feet away from the tabernacle. Red candles flicker against the walls, throwing tongue-shaped shadows along the floor. I turn back around, raise four fingers. “They might not stay too long,” I whisper. “Father Delaney—the priest here—told me the other day that they have to lock up the church between midnight and five A.M. because of security issues.”
“Ah.” James nods. “That explains those big chunks of silence. Although you never know. My mother used to go to these services. She’d stay all night sometimes. Literally hours.”
“Your mother?” I repeat. “She was Catholic?”
James nods. “I think that’s why she never left my father, even though he was such a bastard. The Catholic Church is pretty hard on divorcees. They won’t let them remarry, for one. And they can’t even receive Communion afterward. Like they’re tainted or something. Too dirty now, to receive the Host.”
“Are you a Catholic?”
“Me?” James smiles. “No. I don’t know what I am exactly, but I definitely know what I’m not.”
“Me either. My mom raised me Catholic, but I haven’t believed in any of that stuff since I was a teenager.”
“So what do you believe in now?” James asks.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Not unless you can prove it to me.”
James grins. “Still a doubter.”
I shrug, feeling a little embarrassed, although I’m not sure why. “It’s not a bad thing to doubt.”
“No,” James agrees. “But I don’t know if I feel the same way about not believing.”
“In what?”
“In anything.” His forehead creases. “Don’t you think it’s better to believe in something than to go through life not believing in anything?”
“What’s there to believe in? Religion is all the same bullshit. Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Protestants. They all think they have the only answer, and that their answers are the only ones that are right. How can you believe in things like that?”
“I wasn’t talking about religion,” James says.
“Then what are you talking about?”
He shrugs. “How about one of those facts I used to throw at you? You could try to believe in one of those.”
I cock my head to one side, study him carefully. “Those facts were interesting. But honestly, James, they were useless. I still don’t know if any of them were ever proven and neither do you. That book could have been written by some crackpot, for all I know. Besides, what’s the point of believing in whether or not a heart beats 100,000 times a day or not? I mean, who really cares?”
“But why wouldn’t you believe in something like that?” James presses. “Just for the hell of it? To take it on face value.”
“It wouldn’t hurt, I guess. But it wouldn’t do anything either.”
“It might make you look at your heart differently,” James says. “Which might make you feel better about things in general.”
“You think because I decided to believe that my heart beats over 100,000 times a day I’m going to feel better about things?”
“Our hearts weigh less than a pound,” James says. “And despite that, it does the most physical work of any muscle in our whole body during a lifetime. It beats 100,000 times a day, Bird. That’s seventy-two times a minute. Three and a half million times a year! Isn’t that extraordinary? Doesn’t knowing that make you look at yourself—or at least that little muscle inside your chest—in a whole different way?”
“Not if it’s not true.”
“But what if it was?” He leans forward, a new sense of urgency laced throughout his whispering. “What if it was true? Wouldn’t it be amazing?”
“Maybe.” I look down, pick at the edge of my shoelace. “If it was true.”
“I think it’s true,” James says. “And I think my life is better because I do.”
“How is it better?”
“I don’t know. I guess because it makes me think about other things that are kind of miraculous.”
“Like what?”
He hesitates, but only for a moment. “Like the size of our universe. Have you ever stopped to think about how big something like that actually is?”
“Not really.”
“You couldn’t do it,” James says, shrugging. “It’s almost impossible to comprehend, really. The only way scientists can get some kind of semblance of it is by measuring it with light.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means that the universe is so big that even light hasn’t had time to cross it.” He pauses dramatically. “In fourteen billion years.”
I try to consider this for a moment, but he’s right. It is impossible to grasp, like trying to imagine eternity, which was something I did constantly as a kid after Ma told me that heaven was a place without end. It drove me crazy that I couldn’t fathom it, made me feel as though God was playing a trick on me. “That’s impressive,” I offer. “But how can you consider something you can’t even comprehend to be miraculous?”
“Okay, how about something smaller?” James offers. “The hummingbird, for example.”
“The hummingbird?”
“Some of them are the size of my thumbnail.” He holds up a hand, splaying his thumb to one side. “But they have the biggest brains of any bird on the planet, something like four percent of their whole body. They’re smart, too. They can remember which flowers they’ve already sipped the nectar out of, and how much time they have to wait before they can go feed again.”
I give James a look that says I’m not buying it.
He pushes on, undeterred. “They can fly forward or backward, hover, and even fly upside down, and they do it all so fast that we can’t even see it. Bird, they beat their wings between seventy and two hundred times per second!”
I raise my eyebrows, watching him. Listening to him. The urgency in his voice is nearing desperation. What is it about this stuff that is so important to him? And why does he feel the need to keep sharing it with me?
James is still talking. “You know, it’s interesting that of all the facts I told you back then, the
one you remember is about the heart.”
“Why is that interesting?”
He shrugs. “I must’ve told you at least one hundred facts back then. Stuff about animals, space, plants, food. But you remembered the one about the heart. About all the work it does in a single day.” He’s looking at me so intently that I drop my eyes, feel my pulse beating inside the soft part of my wrists.
“Yeah.” I cross my arms. “So?”
He’s smiling. “You don’t find that interesting?”
“No. Not really.”
“I do.”
“You already said that.”
“I’m saying it again.”
“Well, stop.” I’m fighting the playfulness between us, but I’m not sure why. “You’re getting a little weird on me here, if you want to know the truth. Let’s just drop it, okay?”
“Okay.” James reaches up, pulls hard on one of his earlobes. He adjusts the front of his pants, smoothing down the new creases that have formed along the insides of his legs. “So why did you come back again tonight? Did you forget something?”
I shake my head.
“Then what?”
Thoughts dart in and out of my head, flashing this way and that, like so many brightly colored fish. This. For this. To sit with you a little while longer and hear you talk to me the way you used to. No, God, no. Too much. I’ll sound pathetic. Ridiculous.
“I just . . .” I start, and then I remember the Vicodin in my pocket. “I brought you some more Vicodin. I thought it might help. ”
But James is shaking his head. “Thanks, but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to take that stuff with food. I almost passed out last night from the stomach pains I got from it.”
“Oh my God.” I slide the pills back inside my pocket. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“How could you?” James smiles a little. “What about Angus? Didn’t you say you had to go back home and tuck him in?”
“I called him on the phone. He’s with my mother. He’s okay. We said good night.” James is staring at me with a knowing expression, and I am so afraid of his next question that my hands literally start to shake.
“Can I ask you something?” His voice is gentle, soft as rain. I nod and drop my eyes. “Is Angus . . .” he starts. “I mean, was he from the—”
“Yes,” I answer. “He is.”
The silence between us is charged with so much emotion that I can feel it humming like a blue electricity. Why do I feel so ashamed suddenly, now that James knows this? What has transferred the horror of that night into a guilt that is blurring my vision, making the soft spots beneath my elbows ache?
“Did you ever call the police?” James asks.
I shake my head.
“Does anyone know?”
My head moves back and forth again. The inside of my mouth is dry; my stomach feels weighted.
“What about your mother?”
“My mother?” I raise my head. “My mother will never know. She would have been the last person on Earth I would have told something like that to, and I still plan on keeping it that way.”
“Why? She would’ve helped you, wouldn’t she?”
“Yes. She would have helped me. She would have called the police and taken me to the hospital and done all the right things. But she would have blamed me, too. Especially since I dated him. And because I opened the door that night. Even though I knew he was drunk. Even though I knew I shouldn’t have.”
A long silence passes between us.
“That wasn’t your fault, you know.”
I move my hand brusquely, as if brushing away a fly. “Oh, I know.”
“Do you?” James is leaning forward a little, away from the wall. He is peering at me, trying to gauge my expression, I guess. Trying to figure out if I am really telling him the truth.
“Yes.” I deliberately hold his gaze for a moment and then look away again. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”
A moment passes. “How about Jenny?” James asks. “Did she ever talk to you about it?”
“Jenny?”
“She was your roommate, right?”
“Yeah. But we weren’t close. She was never there anyway. And she moved into her boyfriend’s place a few weeks after it happened.”
“But she was there,” James says.
“Where?”
“At the apartment. That night. That was how I found out what was going on actually. The door was open and she was right inside, just standing there with her hands over her mouth. I started to ask her something, and then we heard you scream again and she turned and ran back down the steps.” He pauses. “You already know where I went.”
My heart is racing, sweat breaking out along the back of my neck like small goose bumps. “I . . .” It’s the only thing that comes out, the only sound I can make at the moment.
“She must have come back for something,” James says. “And heard you. She had to have heard you. Maybe she was just too scared to go back there.”
I nod, swallow. That must have been it. Would I have felt the same way, if the roles had been reversed? Is it possible that I would have stood there, listening to my roommate scream as a former boyfriend raped her in the bedroom we shared? I would like to think that the answer is obvious, that I would have run back there with a bat, or a frying pan, anything to knock him out cold, get him off her.
But the honest answer is that I don’t know what I would have done.
“You look so freaked out,” James says softly. “I shouldn’t have told you. I’m sorry.”
I shake my head, pick at the hem of my jeans. “It’s just . . . weird,” I get out finally. “I just . . . I never knew she was there.”
“Are you angry? That she didn’t help you?”
“Yeah.” I look down at the floor. “Well, not really. I don’t know.” Neither of us says anything for a moment. I occupy myself by drawing a wayward line through the thin film of dust, as if it might lead me to my next thought. “Why were you there that night?” I ask, looking up suddenly. “I never got the chance to ask you that.”
James gazes at me for a moment and then drops his eyes. “I was on my way to the movies,” he says. “I love the movies. I used to go all the time, two, three times a week, just by myself. Get a box of Junior Mints and a Coke with extra ice, and sit in the last row, happy as a clam. And I don’t know, that night . . .” He shrugs, letting his voice trail off.
“That night, what?” I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until I exhale.
“That night I didn’t want to go by myself.”
“No?”
“I wanted to go with you. In the worst possible way. Ever since that day when we’d kissed . . .” He pauses, ducking his head. “Anyway, then I heard you and Charlie had broken up, and it was all I could think about, every day at work. Having you with me at the movies. Right there next to me. For two whole hours.” He smiles. “I was nervous about asking you, too. I walked up and down the sidewalk in front of your apartment for about twenty minutes trying to work up the nerve. When Jenny showed up, I almost left, but then we started talking and she actually came right out and asked me if I was there to ask you out and I told her that I was thinking about it, and she was so nice about it—she said everyone at work had been waiting for me to do it—”
“Wait,” I interrupt, “what do you mean everyone had been waiting for you to do it? How?”
“I’m not sure.” He shrugs. “I guess some people knew that we used to talk out back.”
“Who?” I’m genuinely shocked. “No one was ever around.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really ask her. But you know how people are. How they pick up on things, make their own assumptions. Especially about situations like that.” He looks up at the ceiling, his eyes roving over the length of it. “Lionel said something to me about it once.”
“Lionel? The other cook? What’d he say?”
&nb
sp; “Something about me losing my concentration whenever you were in front, working the register.” James shrugs. “I hadn’t even noticed that I’d been distracted. But he was right. Every time you were up there and I could see you through that little window, it was a little like being at the other end of a telescope. Everything else around me just sort of faded away. The only thing I could see was you.” He inhales lightly. “Anyway, that’s why I was there. That night. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“The rest . . .” My brain is moving so fast that I feel breathless, light-headed. What if Charlie hadn’t come around that night? What if I had opened the door to find James standing there instead, hopeful and nervous, stammering over a request to accompany him to the movies? Would I have gone with him? And what might have happened as a result? Where else could we have taken things?
“Tell me about Angus,” James says suddenly. “What’s he like?”
Angus. My heart skips a beat. There would be no Angus if things hadn’t happened exactly the way they did that night, down to the last horrifying detail. Angus. Something inside me swells at the thought of him, momentarily tempering the rush inside my head. “Oh God, he’s sweet. He’s got black hair and real wide blue eyes. He’s kind of small for his age—he’s five—but he’s the shortest kid in his preschool class.”
James nods. “He’ll grow.”
“He’s really into his shoes. He thinks they’re magic. They’re just these goofy kid sneakers that we found last summer at Sears, but he’s obsessed with them. He wears them every day, even though they don’t fit. It makes me a little crazy, because I know his toes are all squished up in there, but I’ve stopped trying to get him to wear anything else. He used to go nuts when I did.”
“Why does he think they’re magic?”
“I have no idea. He honestly believes that they can make him run faster and jump higher.”
The Odds of You and Me Page 22