Audrey’s Door

by Sarah Langan

  “That’s awful,” Rachael said. To her surprise, tears pooled in her own eyes, too. What a crappy thing to happen to such a sweet, fragile girl. “Did they catch the driver?”

  “No. Some towel-head Indian guy. They should deport them all back to Iran. Bomb that whole desert into a sheet of glass.”

  Audrey frowned. “India, or Iran?”

  Jayne nodded. “That’s right, I forgot. Indians are from India. Whoever’s hoarding those nukes. That’s who hit me…The thing is, I’m so funny, Addie—do you mind if I call you that?”

  “I guess not.” Audrey dropped her hand from Jayne’s shoulder. Bad idea, this touching thing.

  “Good. I like Addie better. Audrey’s so uptight, and you’re so cool.”

  Audrey smiled. She’d been called a lot of things in her life. Cool was a welcome newcomer.

  Jayne kept talking. “You wouldn’t believe how funny I am. Really, you wouldn’t. This won’t slow me down. I’ll make it part of the routine. They’ll piss their pants.”

  “Of course they will,” Audrey said.

  Jayne grinned so sweetly that Audrey grinned, too. “I KNEW you were awesome. Are we still having dinner? I’m starved.”

  The idea was tempting. But she was tired, and not sure she could hold herself erect while Jayne blabber-mouthed her way through an entire meal. “Sure,” she finally said, deciding she’d prefer the company.

  She opened the door to apartment 14B, then remembered the thing she’d built inside the open closet door and stopped short.

  “What’s wrong?” Jayne asked.

  She let out a breath. Impossible to explain. Still, it was far away, down the long hall and in the den. Maybe she could hide it before Jayne saw. Maybe Jayne was so batty she wouldn’t even notice it.

  “Is it boys?” Jayne asked.

  Audrey was about to shake her head, then realized that yes, in a way, it was boys. “Yeah…”

  “Are you okay?”

  Audrey looked at the brass lettering that read 14B. The movers had left a black skid mark, which she wiped clean with the heel of her palm. “No. I don’t think I am. I’ve got obsessive-compulsive disorder, and it makes me do things. I never got treated for it, but I guess I should have. There are other problems, too.” This was a perfect stranger. She couldn’t believe she’d confessed such a thing. For cripe’s sake, she’d never even been able to say it to Saraub. But maybe that was why she was saying it now. Because she should have told him.

  “Does OCD make you sleep around?” Jayne asked.

  Audrey laughed in a quick burst, then sobered when she realized Jayne was serious. She walked into the apartment, and Jayne followed at her heels like an eager puppy, so she broke into a jog, and widened the distance between them. Jayne couldn’t keep up.

  “Sorry. Was that stupid? I was thinking maybe it compelled you to go home with strangers. That’s a compulsion, right?” Jayne called down the long hall.

  Audrey jogged. The doors to the empty rooms were open. Their white paint shone. “No. It’s just funny, because I was a virgin until two and a half years ago,” she called, so worried about hiding the door, that she was more honest with Jayne than she’d intended.

  Behind her, the sound Jayne’s crutches made was a light clip-clop! followed by the slipping sound of her sock as she dragged it along the floor. “Oh. Not me. I lost my virginity when I was twelve.” Jayne twittered.

  “Really?” Audrey asked, though she wasn’t paying attention. She was in the den now, looking at the door. It was smooth and strong, and charged in a way that spread pins and needles through her fingertips. The cardboard fibers were soft as sparse feathers. She’d planned to tear it apart and let the boxes tumble into a pile once the tape was gone, but now that seemed like a waste. All it needed was a handle and frame.

  Clip-clop-Slip!

  Jayne. The sound got closer, and Audrey shoved the closet closed just as Jayne limped through the hall and inside the den. She was talking, and Audrey realized she’d been talking for a while now.

  “—are so mean. I have an act about it: ‘Men you dated who never called: pretend they died.’ Not so clever, but you have to admit it’s true. I’ve got, like, fifty dead boyfriends.”

  Jayne’s crutches shrieked against the hardwood. It was strange having her here. Like her organs—her stomach and lungs and heart and even her brain, weren’t inside anymore. They were on display, her body an open autopsy. She wasn’t used to guests. She wanted to be alone.

  I want to finish the door, she thought.

  “Stuffy,” Jayne said, and headed with her crutches toward the turret. She tried to pry it open, but it wouldn’t budge. Audrey watched, infuriated. What was this woman doing, touching her stuff?

  The wormlike thing she’d swallowed when she first walked into this den unfurled, as if stretching awake. This thing, she knew it was her imagination. A fleeting obsession that in a day or week or month would disappear, only to be replaced by something just as outlandish. Such was the nature of her disease. Still, it felt real.

  With a final shove, Jayne pushed open the turret window. Stained-glass blackbirds with red eyes lifted and doubled on themselves. A crisp fall breeze rushed the room. Fresh air replaced stagnant dust. The change was good. The thing in her stomach went still.

  “There!” Jayne exclaimed. “So, can we eat here? I’ve been cooped up all day.”

  “But I don’t have any furniture,” Audrey said.

  “Got any food?”

  Audrey shook her head. “I got lint. That’s about it. Maybe this was a bad idea.”

  Jayne balanced on her crutches, then clicked open her cell phone. “No way! It’s a great idea! Chinese. Speed dial. It comes fastest. What do you want?”

  Audrey sighed, and surrendered. “General Tsao’s Chicken?”

  Jayne placed the order, and added steamed string beans with garlic for herself. “I’m on a diet, so I can only eat every fourth meal. You would not believe how hungry I am right now!” she mouthed while waiting for the guy on the other line to provide a dollar tally.

  After she clicked the phone closed, Jayne surveyed the mattress and coat-turned-sleeping blanket, and the ten-year-old box television and piano bench on which it was perched. “You need stuff,” she said. “We should go shopping before my act at Laugh Factory this weekend. It’s kind of Zombie Apocalypse Meets the Olsen Twins in here, you know?”

  Audrey pulled two folding chairs that she’d found in the kitchen closet and arranged them in front of the turret. “You think it’s creepy?”

  Jayne eased herself into the chair and perched her injured foot up on the ledge. “Totally! You should wash the walls with bleach to clear the bad psychic residue. Fuckin’ A, you should set a Raid bomb off in this place. That lady was like a roach, anyway.”

  “You knew her?” Audrey asked.

  Jayne nodded. Her foundation and blue eye shadow were cartoonishly thick, like a Mary Kay lady from 1986. Up close, Audrey could see chicken pox scars under her makeup, as if her cheeks and forehead had been scored by a putty knife.

  “What was she like?”

  Jayne sighed. “She was supposed to have this great voice. All the papers wrote about it, like since she had a talent that never got expressed because she turned into a murderer, it was tragic that she died. Like it’s less tragic when normal murderers die. My sister is a nuclear physicist. She invented those bacteria that eat oil spills in the Arctic. She’s got double my IQ. I’ve got a below-average IQ, but I’ll bet you guessed that. Anyway, nuclear physicist. You’d think that was a made-up job, wouldn’t you?”

  Audrey shrugged. “Maybe she lied. She’s really a fry cook at Sizzler.”

  Jayne beamed. “Exactly! You’re funny, too. I could tell the second we met, that you were funny and cool.”

  “It’s true. Most popular girl in Hinton, Iowa,” Audrey said. She meant this to be a joke, but Jayne didn’t laugh.

  “Obviously. I’d kill for those cheekbones. You don’t even dye y
our hair, do you? Natural brunette.”

  Audrey winced. It took her a few seconds before she was sure Jayne wasn’t teasing. Then she laughed. “Thanks, Jayne.”

  “Like a model! Anyway, for all that buildup, I never heard her sing. Just the kid. The girl. Clara’s daughter—”

  The sound of the monster’s name dried the saliva from Audrey’s mouth.

  “—The kid used to knock on the walls in the halls singing ‘Hard knock life.’ She was Annie in the school play. You know: ‘It’s the hard knock life, for us! Steada kisses, We! Get! Kicks! When you’re in an or! phan! age!’” Jayne sang-spoke the words Henry Higgins-style. Her high-pitched voice was surprisingly dulcet.

  “—Cute thing. Really cute. If she was older, I’d have given her a free minibottle of champagne, but not the mom. She could drink Tidy Bowl toilet water for all I care. And then one day…” Jayne’s voice cracked. “And then I came home, and the hallway was wet, because the emergency workers’ boots were soaked in all that water.”

  Audrey squeezed her hands into fists and looked out the window. The blackbirds, doubled on top of each other in the open window, looked like they’d been captured inside the glass. Those poor fucking kids.

  “Did you have any idea?” Audrey asked.

  Jayne pushed down her green sock and unwound the Ace bandage beneath it. Then she pressed her fingers against the wet wound, which was blotted with iodine and green wool sock threads. She pulled the wet threads, strand by strand, from the clot. Squeamish, Audrey averted her eyes.

  “I’ve been through a lot, you know? So I should have guessed. But who imagines something like that? It’s unthinkable.” She pulled another thread, and looked at it as if fascinated. Then dropped it to her lap, and pulled another. The clot broke open and began to ooze.

  “Is that why the rent is so cheap?” Audrey asked.

  Jayne shrugged. “I moved in the same time she did. Before we came, it was only owners. We’re the first renters they’ve ever had. They might not know any better…Since she died, I get nightmares.”

  Audrey was looking out the window. She could see the dark top floors of the Parkside Plaza. A lot of people had died when the bomb went off. When you considered all the tragedies that happened, it made the whole world seem haunted. “Do you ever see a man wearing a three-piece—” she started to ask, but Jayne interrupted her.

  “I know what we need! Would you mind going to my place and getting some wine? I’ve got a bottle of red on the kitchen counter. Same layout as 14B, except not so Romero Meets Cronenberg: Smackdown!”

  Audrey started from her chair. She decided that she liked having Jayne around. It was better than being alone. By a mile. “I’d be happy to. Do you mind my going in there without you?”

  “Pffft!” Jayne said. “Hell, no!”

  “Don’t I need your keys?”

  Jayne shook her head. “I never lock it. What are they going to do? Steal my plastic Mardi Gras beads? The people in this building own Picassos, the salty dogs. Old money and bad surgery. You can dress a hag in Dior, but you can’t make her a Cover Girl.”

  “Totally! The lady next door is a mutant.”

  “Oh, yeah. Mrs. Parker in 14C. The writer. Well, critic, I think. She only calls herself a writer. She drinks, that’s why those funny clothes. They all drink. Too much inheritance and not enough small dogs to spend it on. So, wine?”

  “Okay! Wine!” Audrey giggled, and started down the hall. As she walked, she closed the bedroom and kitchen doors. Open things, she’d never liked them. Like something half-done, or an invitation to the unknown.

  Jayne’s apartment was brighter, but not by much. It faced north and gave a view of Columbia University’s Miller Library. The air was just as oppressive, though, and the place reeked of cigarette smoke, too. The master-bedroom door was open, and she saw that the white sheets and satin, hot pink comforter were unmade. A foam mattress sealed in what looked like a rubber sheet peeked out from under the pink…Was Jayne a bed wetter, too?

  In the spare bedroom were stacks of magazines arranged into piles (Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, Variety, Star, OK!, People). There wasn’t any furniture save a pink Pier I satellite chair—small and cumbersome, as if made for a little girl rather than a grown woman. In the kitchen were more ashtrays, all full. She’d smoked the butts down to the filter, not a speck left of white. A beach shell full of Winstons lay half-submerged in gray, ashy water at the bottom of the kitchen sink. Apparently, Jayne didn’t have many guests, either.

  The wine and a couple of clean glasses were on the counter, along with a thin line of red ants that crawled up through a crack in the backsplash. She smooshed them with her fingers, then picked up what she needed, and surveyed the apartment. Except for Saraub and Betty, she’d never been inside someone’s apartment by herself. It was nice to be trusted this way. Then she remembered that right now Jayne was alone in 14B, maybe peeking in closets (the door!), so she hurried along, and searched for a bottle opener. She found it clipped to the old GE refrigerator by the Sex and the City magnetic poetry (Cock-a-Doodle-Dooo! 30 is the new twenty! Mine is bigger than yours!).

  Also on the GE were about ten photos of redheads ranging in age from infant to octogenarian. Related, clearly. Blue eyes and fair skin. A huge family of cousins aunts, uncles, parents, and siblings. There was also a single, recurring brunette in every photo. She stood back from the others and did not smile. Audrey pulled the “Cock-a-doodle” magnet, and lifted an overexposed Technicolor that looked like it had been snapped in the 1980s. Jayne. The brunette’s small features looked mouselike rather than delicate, and she squinted at the camera, a duck among swans. “Jayne, sweet Jayne,” Audrey clucked, then replaced the photo. No wonder she dyed her hair red.

  Before she left, Audrey quickly sponged the counters clean of ants, crumbs, dried coffee, and ashes. She’d never been good at explaining it, especially not to her freshman college roommate, who’d kicked her out after a month, but straightening things for the people she cared about was her way of protecting them. When everything was in its proper place, there wasn’t room for bad stuff to creep through.

  She reached 14B with the bottle just as the intercom buzzed, and Chinese food arrived. Jayne was sitting quietly when she returned. She seemed calmer than when they’d met in the hall a half hour ago. Maybe making friends was hard for her, too.

  They dug in. Her General Tsao’s was mostly beef grease and MSG, but it did the job and plugged the hole in her grumbling stomach. She finished half the container without looking up.

  To her left, Jayne puckered her nose at the green beans but didn’t eat them, then slugged the wine. “Can I have some of yours?” she asked.

  “Trade,” Audrey said, and they exchanged cartons.

  “Want to watch TV?” Audrey asked after a while. She felt like she was on a date. What do two women do together when they’re alone? She shouldn’t have paid for dinner. Now Jayne had probably gotten the wrong impression, and decided they were going to become lady lesbians.

  “Not unless you do. I watched it all day. Luke and Laura are fossilized now. General Hospital with mummies. I used to sneak the soaps when I was a kid because that kind of thing wasn’t allowed where I come from—I’m Mormon. Now I’m thinking of suing ABC for making me stupid. Either that, or Bumble Bee tuna fish. My mom ate it when she was pregnant with me, and I think the mercury gave me brain damage.”

  “Oh.” Audrey had never seen a soap opera, except the Spanish ones at the Laundromat on Amsterdam Avenue. Lots of close-ups of lone tears streaming down maudlin cheeks. Out the window, the Parkside Plaza was the only building in the 59th Street row whose top lights were dark. The scaffolding only went to the forty-fifth floor, and not all the debris had been cleared. For months after the bombing, people had found human bones strewn all over the block.

  “…I had to give a presentation today,” Audrey said.

  Jayne beamed. Her pockmarks were more evident near her smile, where the blood drained and
her skin went taut. “You did? What happened?”

  “I kind of freaked out at first. I saw something…But then it was okay. Everybody liked it. Even my horrible boss, who was supposed to be the one to give it.”

  Jayne clicked her glass against Audrey’s. “Hooray, Audrey! Boo, hiss, bad boss!”

  Audrey lifted her glass and took a sip. “Thanks,” she said. She suddenly felt warm, and happy. She’d been very lonely this last month, and because of that she’d acted more squirrelly than usual. Funny, but she only realized that now, after lunch with the boys, and now dinner with Jayne, when she wasn’t lonely anymore. “The thing I saw…Did you say you were having trouble sleep—”

  Jayne cut her off. “You know what my problem is? I’m needy. I’ll call, like five times in a day. It’s crazy. I can’t help myself. I know how it looks to a guy. I’m this hyperlunatic with wrinkles and a bad job, but I can’t help it.”

  “Oh, you’re all right,” Audrey said.

  “I’m skinny at least. That’s important. Not as skinny as you, but skinny.”

  Audrey looked at herself. Jayne was right. If she wanted, she could pull her skirt down over her butt without unzipping it. The result wasn’t flattering. In the mirror at work today, her face had seemed gaunt and her eyes sunken unrecognizably deep: she’d looked old. “Have you gone on any dates lately?” Audrey asked. Something told her the answer was yes, and that they’d been a train wreck.

  Jayne bit the sides of her cheeks and rolled both eyes. “A few losers. There’s this one guy I like. He’s kind of a senior if you know what I mean. That’s not so terrible is it? Do you think it’s terrible?”

  Audrey shrugged. “Depends. Does he wear Depends?”

  Jayne clapped her hands together in delight at the very thought of him. “Probably. He’s so old! But he’s good to me. I’m being superstitious this time and not talking about him until I’m sure…Wait! What’s your man problem? Don’t you have one, too?” Jayne asked. She slurped as she drank, even though the wine was in a glass. Not an easy task.