Friend Is Not a Verb

by Daniel Ehrenhaft

  I smiled faintly. I could almost relate to the last part. But I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. The less I had in common with Gabriel, the better—on many, many levels. I skipped ahead a few pages.

  October 23

  Pouring a glass of whiskey at 4 P.M. every single day has become crucial to maintaining a precarious ability to relax. It’s not the whiskey itself, although that helps. It’s the act. It’s watching that luscious amber liquid flow into the glass precisely as the hour hand and second hand overlap, pointing skyward in unison. I can’t have it any other way.

  I keep the whiskey on the mantel in the living room, in the exact center of the house, in a windowless cell that was originally built as a shrine for the Hindu god Ganesh. To get there, I have to walk through several narrow corridors, down two ramps, and up at least one partial spiral staircase. There are four spiral staircases altogether.

  The journey takes exactly thirty-four seconds. My bedroom is on what I suppose could be called the second floor, though there are no “floors” in the true sense of the word; there are levels at varying heights. The house isn’t designed for ease of movement. It isn’t designed to be comfy or homey. It’s designed specifically to repel leyaks: Balinese demons who assume the form of monkeys, birds, and occasionally headless bodies.

  The odd construction made me pretty anxious at first. It took me some practice and time (thirty-two days) to master every single distance, from any room to any other, down to the second. Now I’m used to it. The distance-to-time ratio is firmly ingrained. But the worry still lingers: Will I be late?

  If I am, I will have to pay the consequences. What worries me more than anything is the terrible unknown catastrophe that will inevitably occur if I screw up.

  I paused for a second, confused. Was this a real-live diary, or something Gabriel had made up as he went along? It didn’t read like a diary. I wasn’t sure what it read like. A bad novel? I squirmed in bed, wishing I could ask Sarah if any of this were true. Funny: Emma was right, but not for the reasons she’d imagined. The manuscript wasn’t bursting with any horrifying secrets or acts of depravity. I still couldn’t figure out what Sarah and her friends had actually done.

  I turned to the next page.

  October 24

  Today I raise my glass to toast our home’s original owner: a middle-aged heroin dealer from Bali named Raj Bhutto. He planned to move to the Dominican Republic because he feared deadly reprisals of two kinds: the first being from rival dealers, the second being from the spirit world, for all the terrible sins he had committed. But poor Raj never even made it out of the Eastern Hemisphere. He mysteriously choked to death on a big fat glob of frozen yogurt at a Baskin-Robbins in Hong Kong. According to Sarah, frozen yogurt—“frogurt”—was his “favorite snack.”

  His cruel demise wasn’t an accident. Obviously not. The leyaks had gotten to him. I don’t believe in accidents. I believe in reasons. It was no accident that Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham died after eating four ham rolls and drinking forty shots of vodka, was it? John Bonham loved ham rolls and vodka. Likewise, this Balinese heroin dealer hadn’t died eating grits or a tuna melt. Neither of these foods would have been fitting. Neither was his “favorite snack.”

  On the other hand, the whole story might be a lie. Part of me thinks that Sarah could have made it up in order to justify why the kitchen isn’t near the dining room. It isn’t even on the same level. A criminal’s desperate effort to evade Balinese demons, or at least to keep them off the premises, certainly provides a convenient excuse for the annoying architectural quirks. If every cubic inch of this place were conceived according to the complex laws of Hindu cosmology, then who are we to complain?

  Before we arrived, Sarah had described the house she’d picked out as a “brand-new mansion on the ocean.” This phrase became a sort of mantra among us. I thought I’d be spending the rest of my life somewhere huge and gaudy, with gold fixtures and marble floors and unused-but-fully-stocked refrigerators—like the houses on MTV’s Cribs.

  But no: In spite of everything, Sarah’s heart is still too pure to be such a creative liar. Plus I know better. I was a religion major. Someone built this house out of fear of a greater supernatural power, and I respect that. Nobody else does. Sarah says she loves the place, but she secured the deal to buy it. Admitting that she hates it would mean admitting to accidentally screwing the rest of us over—me, most of all, because this house was supposed to be my victory and retribution. The others freely complain that it’s a big pain in the ass. Madeline outright loathes it. Every day, she rants about the lousy ventilation. But I, for one, am reassured by the building’s spiritual fortitude.

  Not that leyaks pose any threat to me. They don’t waste time tormenting non-Hindus. Yet, where matters of faith are concerned—anyone’s faith—I reserve a degree of respect, even awe. Our residence is probably the only one in all Hispaniola that can boast of being leyak free. And so I feel the need to pay tribute to this anonymous Indonesian drug dealer in a personal, sacred way, whether he ever existed or not.

  I know that we’re living in his home for a reason. We made our escape. He didn’t. Fate left his sanctuary abandoned on a desolate strip of unnamed beachfront road, and through Sarah’s wheelings and dealings in the Dominican cash-up-front real estate market, it became our sanctuary. There must be a connection, some mystery involving the intervention of an Unseen Hand. Not that I necessarily want to figure out the particulars. There’s a reason you hear an eerie voice proclaim: “Here’s to my Sweet Satan” when you play the vinyl of “Stairway to Heaven” backward on a turntable. But nobody understands why. And maybe nobody should. Robert Plant didn’t put it there; that’s for sure. No way was Robert Plant smart or motivated enough to think of backmasking. This is the same goofball who shouted, “I am a golden god!” from a hotel balcony.

  The point is: Investigating the supernatural is a risk that certain people shouldn’t take. For all we know, it might bite back.

  I glowered at the manuscript. Robert Plant is a goofball? I wondered angrily. What about Gabriel himself? Could any of this possibly be true? Could Sarah have really secured the deal to buy their off-kilter Balinese-drug-dealer getaway house? Sarah Birnbaum: inept real estate mogul, I said to myself. Forget it. Well, okay, I could believe the inept part. The only other part I could believe was that their other friends hated it. (Who wouldn’t? If it even existed.) I still hadn’t learned a thing. Well, I guess I’d learned that Gabriel liked Led Zeppelin, or at least knew some Zeppelin trivia. To his credit, it was a step up from the Friends theme song.

  I scoured a few pages for any more mention of Sarah or any hint about why they’d run away. But there were no clues. Gabriel felt guilty, and he seemed to think that he’d talked the rest of them into doing something bad. I got that. But what about Sarah? She was mostly absent, as far as I could tell. After the bit about Raj Bhutto, the only name that seemed to pop up with any regularity was their friend Madeline’s—and mostly in the context of strange arguments with not-so-subtle sexual overtones. Gabriel was clearly a lot more interested in her than he was in my sister (probably a good thing). Maybe this was what he’d been talking about when he’d told me every single straight male thinks about hooking up with a friend—“maybe once, maybe a thousand times.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember what Madeline looked like. I’d only met her three times before, up at Columbia. I definitely remembered that she was hot: tall and skinny, like a model (but less alien), with long curly brown hair and ivory skin that had obviously never seen a zit and never would. I also remembered thinking that she knew she was hot—and she’d probably gotten away with a lot in life because of it, particularly with horny adolescents like me. She was nice enough, but she mostly kept grinning at me as if to say, It’s okay if you’re imagining me naked right now. Run with it.

  It was weird, though. The harder I tried to picture her face, the less clear it became. The memory kept fading into a fuzzy jumble of lots of di
fferent girls from the past: random childhood friends of Sarah’s that she’d lost touch with, Emma’s older cousin Nadine, even the cute twentysomething chick who sometimes works the counter at Mr. Aziz’s deli. In the end, I could conjure up only a dim, tantalizing image of Petra, smiling sadly and saying, “I’m sorry, Hen. I still have feelings for you. It’s just that my band needs a real bass player now…. Okay, sweetie?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Getting My Foot in the Door

  “Hen! Open up. Come on. Stop giving me the silent treatment. I’m your sister.”

  I bolted upright in bed. Jesus. I rubbed my bleary eyes, disoriented. The doorknob was shaking. Gabriel’s manuscript lay open beside me on the rumpled covers. I grabbed it and shoved it under my pillow.

  “Uh, one second,” I croaked. My throat was dry. I blinked at the clock radio on my bedside table. It was 7:45 P.M. When had I fallen asleep?

  “Mom and Dad told me to tell you that they won’t start eating until you come down,” Sarah said.

  I sniffed, catching a faint whiff of Indian takeout. My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten anything since the egg sandwich Mom made me this morning. “Did they order from Taste of Tandoor?” I asked, stumbling out of bed toward the door. I twisted the lock and threw the door open.

  Sarah stood before me in a filthy, loose-fitting Columbia sweat suit—her old gardening and exercise clothes. A few wispy strands of black hair hung in her sweaty face. The rest was pulled back in a bun. Her hands were caked with dirt. She’d taken off her shoes, but aside from a pair of pristine white socks, she looked and smelled as if she’d just gotten into a mud fight. My nose wrinkled.

  “Mom and Dad want us to start eating as a family,” she said.

  I blinked at her, both exhausted and wide-awake.

  A strange electric current surged through me. If Gabriel’s diary were true, then I’d been offered a glimpse of Sarah’s secret life—something I’d never experienced before, not even before the disappearance. (I’d never stumbled upon any diary she’d kept.) For the first time ever, part of me felt as if I truly were staring at a stranger. I resisted the urge to ask her if she’d found any Balinese demons in our backyard or if buying a Dominican beachfront mansion was easier than renting a loft in Chinatown.

  “They want us to eat as a family, huh?” I finally said. “Does that mean they want us to eat together? Or do they want us to try to pretend we’re just like everyone else?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Hen.”

  “What have you been doing, anyway?” I asked.

  “Trying to tackle the garden,” she said, sounding overwhelmed.

  “Literally?”

  She laughed and shook her head, plodding down the steps. “Just come downstairs, okay? We were getting worried. You’ve been up here for hours.”

  “If we’re going to start eating as a family, shouldn’t you wash up?”

  “Since when have you become such a stickler for hygiene?” she shot back. “You must have really matured while I was away.”

  My jaw tightened. Sarah hadn’t earned the right to joke around with me about this past year. Not yet. Until she told me the truth about everything, I couldn’t foresee a time when she ever would.

  “I want to hear about your bass lesson,” she added. “I couldn’t get much out of Mom or Dad. But Dad’s head is in his taxes.”

  My veins buzzed. “Did Gabriel call you?”

  “Nope. I haven’t heard from him all day. He’s lying low.”

  I watched as she disappeared around the corner on the first floor—then I closed my door and dashed back to bed, fumbling for my cell phone. I yanked Gabriel’s manuscript out from under the pillow and punched in the number on the plastic cover. After four long rings, there was a click.

  “Hello?” a groggy voice answered.

  I wasn’t sure I recognized him. “Gabriel?”

  “Madeline?”

  I frowned. “No, this is Hen Birnbaum,” I said, deepening my voice. (Telemarketers made the same mistake. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d been called ma’am since I’d been old enough to answer the phone—but it outnumbered the times I’d been called sir by about four hundred to one, and it never failed to humiliate. Sarah was wrong: I couldn’t have matured that much.)

  “Oh, hey,” he said, sounding amused. “Sorry, I didn’t look at the caller ID. I’m a little out of it.” He yawned. “I was just taking a nap. What’s up?”

  “I…um—I just wanted to apologize for bolting on you this morning,” I stammered.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He chuckled. “I probably would have done the same thing in your shoes.”

  I held my breath, waiting for him to mention the missing manuscript. Calling him probably wasn’t such a great idea. What if he asked how I’d gotten his number? No big deal: I could always tell him that Sarah had given it to me. “I should have at least said good-bye,” I told him. “It was rude.”

  “Well, I appreciate the call, but you don’t have to apologize. There isn’t exactly an appropriate way to behave given the circumstances, you know? I guess that’s why I offered you the Bloody Mary. You didn’t tell Sarah about that, did you?”

  “No.” I wondered if this was a convoluted way of hinting that he knew what I’d done.

  “Good. I mean—well, it’s cool if you did, too,” he said. “You can tell her whatever you want. I’m not in a position to set boundaries or ask for favors.” He laughed again. “I’m definitely not in a position to judge abrupt departures.”

  I chewed my lip. “Well, um…thanks. Would it be cool if we rescheduled? I could come back tomorrow.”

  “You really want to take bass lessons with me?”

  “Yeah. I think I do. At least for now.”

  “Well, that’s great,” he said. “Tomorrow works. My schedule isn’t very booked at the moment. Want to say ten thirty?”

  “In the morning?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Yeah. I’m not so much of a night owl anymore.”

  “Okay. That’s what I thought you meant. I’ll see you then.”

  The conversation at dinner that night, our first meal together since Sarah’s return, revolved entirely around me, and how I should find a summer job in the music industry. I couldn’t tell if this was because Mom, Dad, and Sarah had reaffirmed their secret pact to avoid discussing Sarah’s disappearance at all costs (maybe while I’d napped?), or because they’d simply given up: Now that she was back, there was no longer any point in trying to pretend we weren’t lunatics. We should all feel free to act as deranged as we wanted. Life would be easier. It was liberating in a way, and I was too tired to question it.

  Sarah recommended that I take the subway up to Columbia to look at something called the Job Board, which was where she’d found the gig at the homeless shelter she’d briefly had last summer. Mom agreed that this was a good idea and offered to pack a lunch tomorrow for the long ride to Morningside Heights. Dad recommended that I talk to Emma’s father, as he was an entertainment lawyer with “notable musician clients, or so I’ve heard.” This propelled the evening to even more dizzying heights of absurdity, as Dad had never made any secret of the fact that he disapproved of Mr. Donovan Wood, Esquire—who drank too much, wore flashy suits, and was generally as loud and boorish as Dad was rigid and demented. Plus his “notable clients” were mostly lame emo acts.

  I kept quiet, thinking about all the things I could have said. For instance, I could have mentioned that I’d never once expressed any interest whatsoever in working in the music industry. I could have also mentioned that being a musician and working in the music industry were two different things—and in fact largely unrelated—or that many musicians hated music industry types. But to point out the obvious would be to shatter the fragile, beautiful madness we’d established. Best just to play along. It was actually enjoyable—a truly surreal moment, and one worth savoring, as if I were watching a favorite sitcom and then somehow poof! I magically stepped through the scre
en to become a part of it. There were no longer any rules.

  “You know, I think you may be onto something with this summer job idea,” I said later, as the four of us did the dishes together. “Did you know that every single member of the Beatles interned for a record company? It’s how they got their foot in the door. It’s part of why they became so famous.”

  Sarah giggled.

  “Is that true?” Mom asked.

  “Yes, Mom,” I said. “Yes, it is.”

  Not that I ever needed an excuse to drop by Emma’s after dinner, but I was glad to be able to claim the urgent necessity of speaking to Mr. Wood about summer job opportunities—right away. He wasn’t at home: even better. Ironically, he and Mrs. Wood were at something called the Indie Rock Awards to see one of his has-been emo clients accept a statue for Lifetime Achievement. (For what? Whining?) I flopped down on Emma’s bed and rubbed my eyes. Maybe I should just crash here for the night. I’d never spent the night before, but weird times called for weird measures.

  “My God, classic,” Emma said, after I’d described the dinner conversation in all its twisted glory. “That’s one for the Best of the Birnbaums holiday DVD. But you know what? Your parents are right.”

  “About what?”

  Emma sat down at her desk and clicked onto the internet. “A job is just the thing to keep you from stewing about Petra and Sarah.”

  “Stewing?” I glared at her. “Stewing?”

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “You need a full-time distraction. You need a boss to complain about, a Xerox machine that never works, an office floozy to crush on. You need water cooler banter. Routine, Hen. Routine and normalcy.” She swiveled around and looked me in the eye. “Speaking of which, please tell me you didn’t read that manuscript you stole.”