Recycler

by Lauren McLaughlin

  “I don’t know.” Ramie swipes her cell phone back.

  “And what does the Tower of Babel have to do with anything?” I say. “That’s completely the wrong metaphor. I mean, if anything, Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  “What is this, Bible study all of a sudden?” Ramie says. “We’re talking about your sex life. Oh, I’m sorry. I meant your complete absence of a sex life.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Jill,” she says. “All I’m saying is that maybe you should try—just as an experiment, you don’t have to commit to it forever—but maybe you could try being a little bit less of a prude for one night. Would it kill you?”

  “I’m not a prude,” I say.

  “Define prude.”

  “Define slut,” I say.

  “That’s exactly what a prude would say.”

  “Tommy and I have done stuff,” I say. “Lots of stuff.”

  Ramie snorts dismissively.

  “We have,” I say. “But come on, Rames, be honest. If you were me, knowing how I feel about him, would you have sex with him tonight?”

  Ramie nods aggressively.

  “But he’s leaving tomorrow,” I say. “Wouldn’t that technically make me a one-night stand?”

  “Mal,” she says. “You’re so regressive. And anyway, when you’ve been doing foreplay all summer long, I don’t think it qualifies as a one-night stand. Come on, Jill, he’s your dream guy. How much more perfect could it be?”

  “It would be a little more perfect if he weren’t leaving tomorrow. Ramie, I don’t even know if he loves me.”

  “Have you told him you love him?” she says.

  I shake my head.

  “Of course,” she says. “He has to say it first, right?”

  “I just don’t want to feel like a fool,” I say.

  “There’s a fine line between fool and virgin,” she says around a mouthful of French fries. “And anyway, where is it written that love has to come before sex? I didn’t love Jack before I had sex with him. We had tons of sex before—”

  “Ramie.” I put my hand over her mouth. “Not now.”

  Ramie and Jack’s sex life is not my favorite subject. I accept it. But I do not need all the slurpy details.

  Ramie’s eyes flick to the left.

  I remove my hand from her mouth and see Tommy walking straight for us with a water bottle.

  “Hey,” he says. He hands me the bottle. “Are you guys talking about me again?”

  “Hmm.” I inspect the bottle. “Do they add vanity to this stuff now?”

  Tommy takes the bottle back. “Right. Like you guys don’t talk about me all the time.” He takes a sip. “Come on. Let’s make up some time.”

  There is one thing you should probably know about New York City, in case you ever decide to move here. Actually, there are plenty of things you should know, but the first thing that will make itself deeply, one could say painfully, clear to you is this:

  It’s not like Sex and the City or even Gossip Girl.

  Picture the ugliest clapboard three-story house sheathed in pale blue vinyl siding with fake marble steps and two plastic columns at the entrance.

  Can you see it?

  That’s our apartment building.

  Emerging from the broken screen door is a fat man with a comb-over, wearing a pit-stained T-shirt and blue chinos, which do not quite meet over his domelike belly. He looks like an extra from a Mafia movie.

  “I thought you said there was only two a youse,” he says.

  His name, to my great surprise, is not Vito Marinara or Tony Fettucini, but rather Paul Harkin. He’s our landlord, and he lives on the bottom floor.

  Ramie steps right up to him and shakes his hand. “Hi. I’m Ramie Boulieaux. This is Jill McTeague.”

  He shakes my hand dismissively, then looks at Tommy as if he were an uninvited guest at a wedding.

  “I’m not moving in,” Tommy says. “I’m just passing through.”

  Mr. Harkin looks him up and down suspiciously, then motions with his head for us to follow him inside.

  “Is the car safe here?” Tommy asks.

  Mr. Harkin shrugs, then takes us up to the third floor.

  As he shows us around the furnished two-bedroom apartment, he lets us know that the house has been in his family for three generations and that they do not allow long-term guests or pets of any kind. Also, no parties, no drugs, and “no hammering nails in the wall to hang art or nothin.’”

  Above the mantel, there is, for our convenience and enjoyment, an oil painting of a dog and a cat facing each other in what might be an epic battle or the beginning of an interspecies romance. There is no fireplace, only a slight protrusion in the plaster where it was sloppily bricked over.

  The place is dark and smells faintly of paint. The furniture looks like the kind of stuff a church group would donate after a hurricane: mismatched cushions on the sofa, a coffee table with a taped-on leg.

  “It’s beautiful,” Ramie says.

  “You’re paying cash, right?” Mr. Harkin mumbles. Ramie removes an envelope from her purse and hands it to him. “First and last.”

  By six-thirty, we’ve gotten everything unloaded from the car and unpacked in our teeny tiny bedrooms. Tommy and I are exhausted, but Ramie drags us out to “scope the hood.”

  Our street, Edgar Avenue, features an endless row of tacky three-story homes, with cars crammed so tightly at curbside I’m not sure how anyone gets in or out without an airlift.

  “It’s not what I expected,” Tommy says in a bout of extreme generosity.

  “I thought you lived in New York once,” Ramie says.

  “Long Island,” he says. “Not Brooklyn.”

  “Did you know,” Ramie says, “that Greenpoint is a Polish neighborhood?”

  “I thought this was Williamsburg,” I say.

  “Technically, no,” she says. “We couldn’t afford Williamsburg. Ooh!” She points to a green canvas awning that reads Wlskazhsky or Wslzielkkasxy or something.

  “A Polish deli!” she says. “Let’s get some kielbasa, then go sit up on the roof.”

  Tommy and I look at each other doubtfully, but Ramie grabs us both by the hand and drags us inside.

  Ten minutes later, kielbasa in hand, we’re standing on our rooftop gazing at a handful of brightly colored lawn chairs, plus a broken exercise bike and a deeply frightening giant stuffed panda covered in soot.

  “Wow!” Ramie says. “You’ve got to see this.” She motions for us to join her on the other side of the central water tower, which juts out of the roof.

  And there before us, laid out like a glittering strand of jewels against the dusky sky, is Manhattan. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and thousands of others shine back at us as if to say “Hello there! Welcome to New York!”

  The three of us rest our elbows on the four-foot wall and stare in awe.

  “Wow is right,” I say. I look at Tommy. How could he want to leave such an amazing place? What could he possibly find on the road to San Francisco that competes with this?

  “Can’t you smell the energy?” Ramie says.

  I breathe in deeply. “Yeah,” I say.

  “Actually …” Tommy points to a pair of silver domelike structures in the distance. “I think that’s a sewage treatment plant.”

  “Oh.” Ramie peels herself away to look over the edge on the other side of the roof. “Hey,” she says. “There’s a homeless guy picking through our trash cans.” She looks over at us, all excited.

  I flash her the thumbs-up. Then I return to that glittering necklace. “Tommy,” I say. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful.”

  “Hmm,” he says. “I have.”

  He looks at me and fiddles with the ends of my wig.

  “Yeah,” I say, looking back at him. “Me too.”

  •

  By ten o’clock we’ve figured out exactly where we are on Ramie’s map of Brooklyn, and yes, those two silver domes are a s
ewage treatment plant. Ramie heads out to explore Bedford Avenue, which is “the capital of do-it-yourself street fashion,” according to some magazine she keeps quoting. This leaves Tommy and me alone in the apartment.

  Despite its being our last night together, I still have not decided whether or not to have sex with him. Why do all of my Big Scary Decisions have to come within a few hours of each other? Why can’t everything slow down?

  After showers (separate showers, FYI), Tommy and I sit together on the sofa with its mismatched cushions. Even with the very down-market nature of its furnishings, the apartment does have a kind of charm. A small, dark, cramped charm.

  “I think I’m going to like it here,” I say.

  “Good,” he says. “Promise you won’t get a cat, though.”

  “Why?”

  He lies down on the couch and puts his damp head in my lap. “I don’t know,” he says. “There’s something not right about single girls with cats.”

  The way he refers to me as a single girl makes my stomach turn over.

  “Well, Ramie’s not exactly single,” I say.

  Tommy looks up at me. I don’t count the Mississippis anymore when he does this.

  “Ramie’s a lucky girl,” he says.

  “Yeah, I know. Jack’s amazing and wonderful and an incredible lover. I’ve heard. Believe me, I’ve heard.”

  “So have I,” he says. “When she’s finished telling you, she tells me.”

  “Is that weird for you?” I say. “You know, because we’re, like … you know …”

  He shakes his head in the negative. “Yes.”

  “Really?” I say.

  He nods while saying “No.”

  “Tommy!”

  “Maybe?”

  His hand creeps under my T-shirt.

  I grab it and hold it steady. “Subject changer.”

  He yanks his hand free and slides it up the back of my shirt. “I don’t know if it’s weird or not,” he says. “And I don’t really care. All I know is this summer has been amazing, and I wish you were coming with me.” His hand drifts back to my stomach and begins to wander upward. “But I guess this is it.”

  “It?” I say.

  He nods. “It.” He lifts his head from my lap and kisses me.

  I kiss him back, and within seconds we’re on my bed in a flurry of flying clothes. This is how it always goes with us. We’ll be walking through the dunes having an innocent conversation, or sitting on a blanket reading books to each other, when all of a sudden we’re down to our underwear. It’s not that we don’t do foreplay. Technically, foreplay is all we do. It’s just that we do it very fast. It’s like a sudden hunger overtakes us and all we can do is obey its demands. Tommy never pressures me to go all the way, but he’s made it abundantly clear that he’s up for it. In fact, he’s been up for it ever since that first day in calculus when he laid those gorgeous brown eyes on me and we began a long, smoldering campaign of sticky eyes. I have to admire the ease of his lustfulness as well as his patience.

  Now, though, in the dingy light from the ceramic poodle lamp in my bedroom (yes, I said ceramic poodle lamp), things have a heightened now-or-neverness to them. By the time Tommy and I have flung away all fabric barriers between us, I’m frozen. And my wig’s come slightly loose.

  When I readjust it, he grabs my hand gently. “You can take it off,” he says. “I don’t mind.”

  It’s sweet, but I’m not ready to feel sexy beneath the boyish fringe of my overgrown crew cut. I’m ready for very few of the things life is throwing at me these days. I secure an errant hairpin and keep the wig in place. Part of me wants to forget the Big Scariness of this Decision and let my body have its way. My body doesn’t worry about complicated, abstract stuff. It’s a simple animal. But the other part of me, you know, the head part? That part wants everything to …

  Slow.

  The heck.

  Down.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Whatever you want.” He kisses me softly. “What do you want?”

  “I want …”

  He kisses me again.

  I want to know that he loves me.

  His lips caress my cheek.

  I don’t want to Play It by Ear.

  His lips wander down my neck.

  I’d much prefer to Stay Faithful to Each Other.

  “Stop,” I tell him.

  He looks up at me expectantly.

  The words “I love you” are somewhere on their journey from the pit of my soul to the tip of my tongue.

  “Yes?” he says.

  But they never make it out.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “It’s okay.” He kisses my forehead. “I don’t want to rush you.”

  But everything is rushed now. Time is ticking by, and I feel like I’m running in quicksand.

  Tommy slides off of me and settles his head on his hand. “You don’t want to?”

  I do. I just can’t bring myself to say it.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “When you’re ready, you’ll know.”

  I hope he’s right, because I don’t feel like I know anything anymore.

  “Hey, Jill,” he says. “About tomorrow. When I go?”

  My throat dries up.

  He takes a deep, nervous breath. “I’m really afraid of falling apart, so I’m just going to get up early and sneak out, okay?”

  “But … why?”

  “I want this to be our last moment together. Right now. Like this.” He puts his arms around me. “Not some horrible goodbye.”

  That’s when it finally hits me. This is not see you later. This is goodbye.

  “Sure,” I say. “That’s a good idea.”

  “Thank you.” He inches down and nestles his face in my neck.

  His long arms wrap around me and his long legs cross with mine. We hold each other silently in the poodle’s dim light, Tommy’s head growing heavy on my shoulder. We lie like that in silence for a while. I shiver, not from the cold, but from the fear that each decision I have made is the wrong one. And none of them can be reversed.

  Eventually Ramie’s keys jingle in the lock. Slowly and quietly, she tiptoes down the hall and stands outside my bedroom door.

  “So cool,” she whispers just outside the door. “You’re going to love it here. Two-dollar pizza.” She tiptoes to her own room across the creaky floor.

  When I reach for the poodle’s cord to kill the light, Tommy stirs, then settles.

  “Tommy?” I whisper.

  But he’s asleep now.

  “I love you,” I whisper.

  In the distance, a siren wails.

  In the morning, when I open my eyes, the first thing I notice is the empty space on the other side of my bed. The second is a Post-it stuck to the nose of the ceramic poodle. Written across it in bold blue Sharpie are the words “I love you too.”

  •

  “I don’t understand,” Ramie says.

  “Neither do I.”

  Ramie and I are sitting in a red vinyl booth at a diner where no one speaks English and a lot of cabbage is boiled. I have Tommy’s Post-it note gripped firmly in hand.

  When the waitress comes over, Ramie orders scrambled eggs and bacon for both of us by pointing at the menu. “We should deeply learn Polish,” she whispers. She cocks her head to the side. “Jill, are you okay?”

  “I just don’t understand, Ramie.” I hold up Tommy’s note. “What does this mean?”

  She takes the note away from me and sticks it on the table. “It means he loves you.”

  “But …”

  “But nothing, Jill. He loves you, and you should have had sex with him.”

  I stare at her dumbly.

  “Oh.” She reaches across the table and grabs my hand. “I’m sorry. It’s deeply not the time for tough love, is it?”

  I shake my head.

  The waitress wordlessly deposits two mugs of coffee on the table.

  I slump over my cup, pour some cream into it, then take a s
ip. “That’s disgusting.”

  “I forgot to tell you,” she says. “They put milk in their coffee here instead of cream.”

  “Why?”

  Ramie shrugs. “To punish Red Sox fans?” She smiles hopefully.

  But I’m in no mood to be cheered.

  The waitress brings us a plate of white toast with some plastic packets of grape jelly.

  “I blew it,” I say. “Didn’t I?”

  Ramie sighs.

  I slump back in the red vinyl seat and stare at the street scene beyond the diner’s large window. There’s a fruit-and-vegetable market and an offtrack betting establishment, plus some middle-aged women with wonderful cheekbones pushing shopping trolleys. It seems strange that this is my new home, my “hood.” One day soon, this will all be familiar. I wonder what that will feel like.

  I take a bite of toast. “Sorry to be such a drag.”

  “You can be a drag if you want,” she says. “But only for today.”

  “All right,” I say.

  But I don’t think one day will cover it. All summer long I was saving myself until I knew for sure that Tommy loved me. Now I think he always did but was waiting for me to say it first.

  “Jill,” Ramie says. “You’re spiraling.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s okay to obsess about Tommy,” she says. “Just do it out loud. Don’t sink into yourself.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  But when the eggs come, I poke at them in silence while sneaking glances at the upside-down writing on Tommy’s note. I wonder where he is right now and if he has any regrets. Is he driving down the highway wondering if he got it all wrong too?

  Probably not. Tommy’s at the beginning of an amazing journey, a journey he’s dreamed of since middle school.

  So is Ramie, for that matter. They both have bright, shiny futures to look forward to. They can dream big and have exciting adventures.

  Not me. Surviving high school with my secret intact was all I ever hoped for.

  And I didn’t even get that. Not that I’m complaining.

  “One year,” Ramie says.

  “Huh?”

  “He’ll be back. You’ll see.”

  I nod, but I’m not so sure.

  “And you know,” she says. “A lot can happen to a girl in one year. Especially in this city.”

  I cringe through another sip of bitter coffee. “What?” I say, “Like getting mugged?”