“I might go back to sleep. I have a pretty bad headache.”
The pressure was pounding against my eyes and sinuses.
“I don’t think temping is right. For me. But I’d like to find something else to help, like getting a job at the zoo. I could do that I think. Maybe not every day, but—do you think I could make money that way? Like an intro job? Maybe a trainer in training if I went there enough? There was this lady who mentioned volunteering—”
“Did you take your medicine?” he said.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine in a couple hours.”
“The migraine pill?”
“I just need to eat something. And sleep. It happens a lot.”
I began rubbing my temples, which probably only made things worse.
“What happened at the temp agency?”
“Nothing, really. Temping is for people who have lots of hair, who have notes to review. There was nothing for me there.”
“Did they say that?”
“Basically.”
“Well, that sucks.”
“Yeah, it did,” I said. “I’m sorry it didn’t work.”
“Me too,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to try to pick up more hours.”
“Is that even possible?”
He didn’t answer.
“At the zoo, I did a really good sketch of Gus, the polar bear. You want to see?”
“I don’t have time.” He was fixing his collar and smoothing the bottom of his shirt, trying to get rid of the wrinkles. He didn’t own an iron. From the side, with a squint, he was still a kid playing dress-up. “I have to go.”
“Maybe I could work with Gus. I mean, what if I could somehow look into working there? Dad mentioned that once too, with the talk-show host. So what if that’s a real thing?”
“You tried to tell me.”
He was gathering his things and pushing them into his bag when he met my eyes for a second.
“About Gus?” I said. “I did, right?”
“You can’t have a regular job. You’re right. I guess I just had to see it to understand.”
My throat was knotting up. It was the tone.
“Do me a favor, all right? Don’t just stay here all day. Try to do something productive.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant. Making soap? Knitting scarves?
“I’m not the same as you. I just wanted you to know that, so that if I can’t—”
“I’m late.” He grabbed his keys and checked his watch. “But we need to go over some ground rules before I leave.”
“Do we have any more coffee?” I said.
He poured me a mug and then proceeded to deliver a lecture that might have been appropriate for a kindergartener.
Here are the keys. Never leave home without them. Here is the phone. Never leave home without it. Charge it every night. Here is where I charge my phone. This is how you call collect. Remember 911. There’s also 311. This is my number. Memorize it. Here is where we live. Here is a subway map. Here is a street map. Here is a twenty-dollar bill I want you to fold into the pocket of your wallet. Here is how you know when something is worth calling me. This is the household cleaner. Here is the soap and water. This is how you clean as you go.
I nodded through all of it, but it was too much all at once. It was stifling.
Once he left, I knew that I needed to get out.
I WANTED TO go back to the zoo, but I didn’t want to pay for admission again; I wanted to try to conserve the money Nate had just given me, and to save my valuable time with Gus, so I started walking. He had said the Starbucks was in a nicer area, away from the clumps of people milling around stoops. About ten minutes in, I was lost, but I found a different coffee shop off a side street that smelled so tempting I couldn’t help myself from drawing closer—and closer still, until I saw a sign. Help Wanted.
Just when you thought all hope had vanished, you could look up and see something like this: Me behind the counter distributing independently operated java to the masses, a regular location for a fixed wage, smelling of beans, imbibing caffeine. Maybe this was what fate was. Coffee, I could do.
“What’s your take on the day’s special?” I said to the man at the register. He was compact, and very pale, almost translucent. His hair was nearly white, and his eyes, magnified by wire glasses, almost entirely clear, marked only by the slightest tinge of green. I wondered how he’d look stained with mocha.
“It’s very popular,” he said.
“And how does it compare with the other blends?”
“Umm . . . I’m not sure exactly.”
“Is it more of a dark or medium roast? Does it have that earthy, Indonesian feel or is it a lighter, brighter flavor? How would you characterize the acidity? Is it closer to a Sumatran, Kenyan, or Costa Rican flavor?”
“Wow, you must really know your coffee.” He rubbed the fuzz at the back of his head. “I’m probably not the best person to ask.”
“Don’t you work here? You looked like you did, because you were behind the counter, but I guess you don’t. I’m sorry.”
“No, I do.”
I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. He just observed me, as though he were about to say something else.
“Right,” I finally said. “Do you know anything about the Help Wanted sign on the window?”
“What? The sign! I meant to take that down.” He scurried to the window to rip it away. “My father thought—we thought we needed someone who—did he send you?”
“Who?”
“No one.” He stood up straight and pushed back his narrow shoulders. “There is no position at this time.”
“Oh.” The glimmer of light went black. Again. “I get it.”
“I’m sure that if we had a position, we would have considered you.”
“It’s okay.” I took a heavy breath. “I can’t do jobs anyway. I don’t have any experience, and I’m a hazard. I’m missing that switch people need for work. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He didn’t respond.
“But I’ll still have coffee, I guess, since I’m here, if that’s okay. The Ethiopian?”
When he handed me the cup, I pulled out my crumpled bills, but he refused them.
“First-time-customer special.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”
“I’m in charge of the counter at this location.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“I mean, great. Not like you don’t seem like you could be in charge. See how I do that? Mess up the connection? Now I’ll go. Thanks—for the coffee. It looks good.”
I eyed the newspapers hanging on giant wooden sticks in the front of the shop and collected as many as I could hold. About half of them fell by the time I got to an empty table in the back, but there weren’t many people, so I didn’t hit anyone. The man at the front came around the register to help me.
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay.”
He smiled a little awkwardly, in a way that didn’t make me feel self-conscious enough to leave.
It seemed every ad in the Classifieds was seeking experience, or skill or organization. There wasn’t anything about the zoo, and there weren’t any calls for all-purpose playmates to dogs or to children who could take care of themselves, so I stopped searching and began to look around.
The walls were beige and decorated with frames of artificial sunsets, cottages in the country, shoddy brushwork, and clumsy composition. They seemed especially tacky contrasted against the dark-cherry paneling in the back. I took out my sketchbook and began drawing a modified version of a waterfall.
“My mother did the one in the middle.”
I hadn’t noticed the man from the counter standing behind me. He was carrying a fresh pot of coffee and offered me a refill. His voice was as wispy as his frame.
“She did? That’s—wow.”
His cheeks turned pink.
“I’m Frank
.”
“Frank. My dad always told me to say the name after you hear it to remember. Three times. Frank. And then use it in a sentence. You should try the coffee, Frank,” I said. “It’s really good.”
“Thanks, but I can’t. It hurts my stomach.” He paused, as if in deep thought. “I like tea sometimes.”
“Tea’s supposed to be good for you.”
He stared at me, not in a repelled kind of way, more like he was fascinated.
“What was your name?” he said.
“Oh. I should have said that first. It’s Lucy. And I should say your name again too, Frank. Right?”
He nodded and waited another second, making sure I wasn’t going to say anything else, before pouring and walking away.
Then he walked back.
“I think I’ve seen you before,” he said.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I just moved here.”
“Oh.” His face was flushing again. “I thought I saw you in a group meeting, a while ago.”
“What group? When?”
“I didn’t meet you. I heard about you, and I saw you once, before they told you to leave.”
“The brain injury group?”
“Yes.”
“You were in that? That was humiliating. I mean, for me it was.” I searched his face. “You don’t look familiar.”
“I was there after you,” he said. “My first day was your last.”
I hated thinking about that place. I took a big sip.
“Did you have brain surgery too?” he said.
“No, I was hit by a truck.”
“That must have hurt,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m sure it did. I don’t remember. I was only three.”
“I used to get seizures. All the time. Now I don’t, but things are sometimes fuzzy.”
“Oh,” I said. I couldn’t think of what else to say.
I wanted more coffee, but there wasn’t any left in my cup.
“Would you like another pour?” he said.
“No, that’s okay,” I said. “I should probably stop there.”
I got up to leave.
“You didn’t like the group,” he said. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“It’s okay.”
“I was just happy to see you here.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “I guess I wasn’t expecting to talk about brain injuries today. That’s all. It’s not the first thing I bring up.”
He nodded and returned to the counter.
I thought about saying goodbye to Frank on my way out. It was nice of him to give me coffee, but he seemed busy with a few people at the register, including a towering woman carrying a pug.
“You have to leave your dog outside,” Frank said to her. “It’s policy.”
“What?” I said. I had said it in my head, but it had come out audibly, loudly apparently.
Frank turned to face me, and I searched his eyes. They weren’t red or puffy.
“Are you allergic to dogs?” I said.
“No, but my father made this clear: pets don’t have a place in an eating and drinking establishment.”
“You know, speciesism is a serious problem in this country.”
His whole face was pink now. “I’m not sure I’m—following you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t even work here, so—why should I care? I shouldn’t. The customers can speak for themselves. Well, the dogs can’t speak for themselves, but—I’m sorry. I was on my way out.”
Halfway to the door I caught sight of the pug through the window. I could see his expression drop as the woman walked back in, and I thought of how rough it must be, so reliant on someone else for every need. I tried to count the folds in his face, worry lines from all of the anxiety, how many fell around his mouth, beyond his snaggled tooth, the strip of tongue pushing past his pout. I parked myself on the windowsill and opened a blank page of my sketchbook.
Rough circles, then a face, a sad, sagging tail. I began to draw as I settled into his expression, his watery eyes. A single tear could break down the barriers of speciesism.
I entered into my zone. My fingers began to burn, the pencil moving faster than I could control it. I was filling pages in minutes, somehow flipping faster than my normal coordination allowed, when I heard a voice.
“Is that mine?” the dog’s owner said.
“What, this?” I got up from the window ledge to face her. “It’s just a sketch. I mean it’s sort of him, but it’s pretty generic at this stage.”
“I love it,” she said. “And you are?”
“Lucy,” Frank said.
He had again covertly positioned himself behind me.
“Charming,” she said.
I followed her out, trying to keep pace. I wanted to know what she liked about it specifically, but her legs were too long, my breath too short, and I lost her as soon as she curved around the block.
Still, I wasn’t too disappointed. When I turned around to face the shop, I realized I had found another place I might be able to return to, which meant this had been a productive day, a day when I had done things. Real things. Nate would have to approve.
16
WHEN NATE GOT HOME THAT NIGHT, IT WAS EARLIER THAN the night before so I was still awake, but he hadn’t given me fair warning.
“I’m cleaning up now,” I said, mouth full of pretzels. “Do you want one? I mean not from the floor, but—”
“Luce,” he said slowly, as though he’d been up for days, “I really need you to pitch in.”
He opened the refrigerator to pull out the requisite beer. “Have you noticed how little substantial food we have?”
“I got oatmeal.”
He looked at me. “Really?”
“The unsweetened kind, because it’s healthier, and it was on sale. And milk. That’s a staple, right?”
“It is.”
“Plus, there are more pretzels.”
“I guess I’m not hungry.”
“Did you have a rough day or something? Because mine was pretty decent.”
He got down on the floor to pick up a couple of flyers and a magazine I was flipping through earlier while searching for the remote control.
“This is from two years ago,” he said. “How did it get here?”
“After you left, I went to this coffee shop, and I met these people, and I searched for jobs.”
He stood up. “Did you find one?”
“Well, not exactly, but—”
“It doesn’t belong on the floor,” he said, moving back to the kitchen.
“Sorry,” I said, but he couldn’t hear me over the water running past the dishes.
I followed him and raised my voice. I watched him pop a pill, Advil or Excedrin, I guessed.
“Do you have a headache?” I said. “Can I help?”
He turned off the faucet. “Did you say something?”
I wanted to tell him all about my day, about Frank and the pug. It was the type of day Dad would’ve eaten up, but I could see it wasn’t the right time.
“I’ll clean up the magazines.”
SOMETIME IN the middle of the night, long after I’d gone to bed, I woke up, stumbled toward the kitchen, and found Nate on a cushion gazing into nothingness. His mail sat unopened on his lap; a couple of beer bottles surrounded him; an ashtray filled with short cigarettes sat beside him. Were those joints? He didn’t look like himself. He looked like another Nate—disheveled, lackadaisical, unaware.
He drank milk straight from a bowl of cereal.
“Are those Lucky Charms?” I said. “Where’d you get those?”
“Get what?” He wiped his mouth. “Guess you caught me. They had them in the dining hall.”
“You still go there?”
“I wish. I used to bring in a giant container every day, fill it with cereal, and stuff it into my gym bag when no one was looking. I just remembered I still had the container I filled before I left. You want some?”
�
�No,” I said, examining his stash. “It’s yours.”
But the marshmallows were so bright and enticing, the oats so hearty and friendly. The perfect accompaniment to Saturday-morning cartoons. I could taste them.
“I mean, maybe just a handful if you have any left. . . .”
He poured a pile into my hands, and I popped the pieces straight into my mouth.
“Like candy,” I said.
“The ideal balance of sweetness,” he said.
“Yeah, but isn’t it late for cereal? Why are you up?”
“It’s never too late for cereal,” he said.
I grabbed more.
He moved the container away from me. His eyes were bloodshot, and he smelled like herbs.
“They’re addictive,” I said. “You ate this every day?”
“Oh man, all the time. Nothing better to satisfy the cravings. There were so many late nights, so much reading and studying all the time.”
“Sounds hard.”
“Sometimes, but it was worth it. It was like you would sit in this giant space in the library surrounded by all of these great minds, hundreds of years of great minds before you, and just take in knowledge. Like you could feel your brain expanding with all these new insights at every turn, all these smart people making you think. Like their only job was to make you think. Then we’d take these study breaks in the lounge where we’d eat cereal and argue over cartoons or have paper-airplane contests, and it was all bullshit, and it was all perfect. That’s how it was on the best nights. When my only job was to study.”
“You’ll go back.”
He hesitated before answering. “One day.”
“What was your major again? Philosophy?”
“That was last year.”
“Do you still want to be a doctor?”
“Maybe. But I was heading in a different direction this year. Political science.”
“Law school?”
“Or policy.”
“Save the world,” I said. “You could totally do that.”
He fished out a bag of pot from the inside of his backpack and began rolling joints like a professional, his fingers two-stepping. How much had he already had?
“You want some?” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “You do this a lot?”
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