Traps

by MacKenzie Bezos

  Dark and cool and low, the garage is mostly full at this hour, but she finds a slim space. Her shoes make a gritty sound in the echoey dim as she crosses, beetle-backed in her big backpack and carrying the dress high to keep it from dragging. It trails behind her a bit at the hem, like a ghost. They ride up in the elevator together and emerge into the third-floor hallway, brown doors receding into the distance like beads on a string, and she stops in front of number three-twenty-four.

  It is dim inside, all the louvered blinds drawn flush to the windowsills against the late afternoon sun, and Dana flicks on the lights to reveal an expanse of white wall-to-wall carpeting broken only by a white couch, a glass-topped coffee table, and a computer desk with a closed laptop. On the wall to the left of the couch, a bicycle hangs from a pair of hooks. Above the desk is an Escher print of infinite stairs. The silence inside this room is thick, almost cottony.

  She shuts the door.

  On the clean floor of the hall closet, beside two pairs of neatly aligned running shoes, there is a space for her backpack. Above it she hangs the peach-flowered dress. The bedroom beyond has a light blue blanket and a smooth fold of white topsheet beneath another Escher print—this one of triangle tiles that row by row part and change just slightly, until at the top they fly away as birds. She showers in a small clean bathroom where all the personal items hide secreted behind a mirror, and dresses in jeans and a white T-shirt and afterward steps to her living room window, where, with a slow pull of a cord, she draws the blinds half open, filling the white room with light. She cracks the window, and flamenco music drifts to her from across the way.

  Then her phone rings.

  Dana looks through the half-lowered eyelid of her metal blinds at the curtains luffing out across the way. On the windowsill, a green plant growing from the skull of a cow. She picks up the phone.

  That same music and a man’s voice: “You’re home! I’m on the other line with my mom! Save me!”

  Then a click and a dial tone.

  Dana smiles. Although this trip is just down the hall, she puts on her sneakers. She slings her backpack over her shoulder. She locks her door behind her. She walks down the long gray carpet. Beige walls with brown doors. A welcome mat. A wreath of hay and dried flowers. A right-angle turn to the right, and more doors, and another right turn, and then the sound of Latin music draws her to a door where a pair of muddy sneakers lies untied and discarded, toes pointing in opposite directions on the threshold of a door that is half open.

  When she pushes it wide, she is face-to-face with a red macaw on an open perch plucking a grape from a bowl of sliced bananas and oranges. Birdseed is scattered everywhere on the little square of white linoleum that marks the vestibule, and in the tangle of sneakers and boots and sandals below, cracked peanut shells and little pellets of millet line the insoles and fill the crossed laces.

  The room beyond is similar in shape to her own, but larger. The white rug is covered with a big raggedly cut rectangle of bright green Astroturf, and the couch, on which a second parrot (blue and gold) sits preening, is draped with a Spider-Man bedsheet. In the corner a huge wooden Buddha sits cross-legged and delighted next to a terrarium crisscrossed with branches and bejeweled with tiny frogs. A sudden breeze pushes the curtains into the room like streamers and knocks the cow skull full of soil and green tendrils onto the floor. Standing in the kitchen in swim trunks and a yellow T-shirt, holding a cordless phone to his ear, the man who summoned her here does not notice this, though. He only notices her. His eyes widen at the sight of her standing behind his parrot. This is Ian.

  “Mom, I have to go! I’ll see you tomorrow, Dana’s here!”

  He turns on the water and tries to rinse his hand. “Yes, I’m bringing her with me this time so you can finally meet her.” He wipes his dripping hand on the seat of his shorts, leaving a trace of green. “She’s a volunteer EMT, I said, remember? I saw her in her uniform, and I asked her to teach me to do my Sylatron injections.…” He is rolling his eyes now and grinning. “Her regular job is in security services, yes.… Yes, it’s crazy and appalling that you have to ask after we’ve been dating almost a year.…” He raises his eyebrows and runs a hand through his messy blond hair. “Yes, we plan to continue living in sin for a while.… No, actually that’s a common misconception, sin only gets better with age.…” He winks at Dana. “Tomorrow, yes, and I have a perfectly good suit, yes. I know that weddings start at a specific time, yes. And in this case it’s seven o’clock in San Marino, yes. I love you, yes. Okay, gotta go.”

  When he hangs up, his hands shoot into the air. He takes two big strides, cradles her head between his hands, stamps a kiss on her mouth, and pulls back grinning. Then he fingers her backpack straps and pulls them off—one, two—eyeing her slyly, as if they were straps on lingerie.

  “Hi,” she says, and her eyes flit (she can’t help it) to the ridge of scar tissue in a patch of reddened skin just below his left ear.

  “Any oozing?” he says.

  “No.” She shakes her head and squeezes her eyes shut a second. “Sorry.” She opens her eyes. “What are you making over there?”

  “I was at the Venice Market, and there was this beautiful Puerto Rican woman with ice blue eyes and six little kids running around and two Colt 45 cartons, one full of Rottweiler puppies and the other full of ripe avocados marked ‘Whole box, fifteen dollars.’ I figured you’d be happy I came home with the avocados.”

  “Instead of the Puerto Rican woman?”

  He laughs (gigantic; explosive; a joyous gunshot) and says, “Instead of one of the puppies, I meant.”

  “A puppy I wouldn’t have minded.”

  “Aha! ‘Minded,’ though! That’s the key word. I don’t want anything to jeopardize my slow and steady, make-moving-in-with-Ian-easy-and-attractive plan.”

  She eyes the birds and the frogs. “I don’t think a puppy would have tipped the scales much.”

  “Is that a yes?” He grins, and before she can answer he grabs her by the back of the neck and plants another kiss on her forehead. “So I tweeted about the avocados, and now I might have as many as four hundred and eighty-nine people showing up in an hour for guacamole and this drink I found on the Internet that’s blue, and I need you to taste everything because I still can’t taste.”

  “What’s in the drink?”

  “Rum and blue Kool-Aid mostly, with green sugar on the rim. I just wanted it to be blue and green, like the Sylatron box. Here, taste the guacamole, would you?”

  He has mashed it in a large frying pan with a scuffed black plastic handle. He dips a finger in and offers it to her and she takes a tentative lick. She squeezes her eyes shut again, smiling and wincing at the same time. “So salty!”

  “See! That’s what I need you for! Or one thing, anyway. I was seasoning it while I was talking to my mom and I got distracted. Help me add more avocados.”

  Dana washes her hands at the sink, soaping them so thoroughly it makes him grin. She holds her dripping hands upturned like a surgeon, looking around his counter at the crumpled hand towels, the box of hypodermic needles, and the pile of mail, and finally takes a paper napkin from a plastic bag lolling in the mash of green.

  He says, “Hey, how’s your nausea?”

  “Thriving.”

  “Have you thought about seeing a doctor? Maybe it’s not the triathlon training. Maybe you’ve got some kind of bug. Swine flu. West Nile. Encephalitis.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s the training.”

  “Maybe it’s sympathy nausea! ‘Radiation Side Effects Particularly Strong in Devoted Lovers of Melanoma Patients, New Study Reveals.’ ”

  “It’s worse after exertion, mostly after the longer runs.”

  “Or hey! When was the last time you got your period?”

  “A girl like me does not get inadvertently pregnant, Ian.”

  “Accidents happen—”

  “Only to disorganized people.”

  “There’s always room for serendipity.”


  “I take the pill, and I make you use a condom.”

  “Okay, fair point. I have some ginger ale in the fridge if you want some.”

  “That sounds pretty good, actually.”

  She opens the refrigerator. Inside is a loaf of white bread, a six-pack of ginger ale, and one can of Boost nutritional supplement drink. She pulls out a ginger ale and cracks it open and takes a sip.

  Then she goes to her backpack and brushes aside the millet and bits of peanut shell and opens a zippered compartment to withdraw a little plastic tube of multivitamin tablets—the kind you drop into water and make fizz. Ian is watching her. She takes a glass from his cupboard and drops an orange disk in the bottom with a tinkling sound. She fills it up with water and slides it toward him among the dark skins.

  He watches it dissolve, hissing. An ugly lacing of yellow foam rims the top of the glass.

  “It’s good for you,” she says.

  “Maybe.”

  “It can’t hurt.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Humor me?”

  He smiles at her. “As long as we both shall live,” and he gulps it down, tipping his head back, the ridge of scar exposed. Dana looks away, her eyes settling on his messy counter: the plastic bag of paper napkins, his keys and wallet, the sea of skins and streaks of avocado and a box of needles not quite closed and that pile of mail, slipping among the pits and peels. A postcard. A utility bill. An ad for a wireless plan. An open envelope from Aetna insurance, the top of it sticking out with a phone number handwritten in purple crayon across the top:

  Dear Mr. Freeman:

  We regret to inform you …

  “What’s that from Aetna?” she says.

  “Just a letter.”

  “What do they regret to inform you?”

  “They denied one of my claims.” He takes another avocado and slices it open with a heedless little zip of his paring knife.

  “For how much?”

  “Thirty thousand-ish.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “We’ll see.”

  “How can you say that?”

  He squeezes the yellow-green into the pan. “I’m sure it will all work out in the end.”

  “How?”

  “One thing will happen. And then another and another. And so on.”

  She grabs the letter. At the top is an incongruous blue-and-yellow logo—a stick figure with arms upraised to catch rays of light. Dana goes to her backpack and takes out a pen and a tiny notebook. “Do you mind if I write some of this down?”

  “Not if you don’t mind my finding your relentless notetaking mysteriously arousing.”

  She crouches among the seeds and writes, “Sylatron.… 888 micro-grams.… Aetna Claims Division.”

  Ian is wiping his hands on his shorts as he moves to crouch next to her. He has to stand under the bird perch to do it, and he settles in beside her, the millet and hulls cracking beneath his bare feet. He kisses her on the shoulder.

  “Hold on a sec,” she says, and keeps scribbling.

  He kisses her again. “I can appeal it, Dana. It happens all the time with cancer treatments.”

  “Can I borrow this for a night? There’s so much here.”

  “You can borrow anything,” he says.

  She makes another note. Then closes her notebook and slips it in a little pocket with the letter, folding it small.

  He says, “What else have you got in there?”

  She smiles and zips the pocket shut.

  He says, “Please? Just a few things?”

  She rolls her eyes, but she unzips the top compartment and reaches inside. She draws out a roll of duct tape. A ziplock bag of zip ties. A ziplock bag of ziplock bags.

  “Temptress,” he says.

  She pulls out a set of tiny screwdrivers. A box of matches. A pair of black sandals. A small white-noise machine and a little box of earplugs.

  “Vixen.”

  She laughs then and turns awkwardly to kiss him, a long kiss, both of them squatting over her backpack under the bird stand among his dirty shoes.

  He says, “Will you stay for the party?”

  She winces.

  “Is that a yes?”

  She puts the duct tape back in the bag. “I have twenty-three steps in my latest sleep-improvement regime.” She puts away the matches and the zip ties.

  He says, “Maybe that’s part of the problem.”

  “What is?”

  “All the steps. A regime.”

  She gathers the remaining things and arranges and rearranges them inside. He himself falls asleep so easily. She has seen it many times before she steals back to her snow white room, his arms and legs splayed wide in the center of his churned sheets, his lips parted. Sometimes tiny tears form at the outer corners of his closed blue eyes.

  He says, “Maybe what you need is a super late night of blue drinks and the comfort of sleeping in an unfamiliar bed with a charming snorer who adores you.”

  She is still shifting things around in her bag. “It’s just the way I’m built, Ian. That should comfort me—I’m with you on that—but it doesn’t. You know what comforts me?” She takes her hand out of her backpack and looks at him squarely.

  “Tell me.”

  “Being alone. Being in my own room alone. Or even—it’s crazy, get this—wearing a costume. Helmets too. Helmets comfort me. And sinking to the bottom of a public pool. Or here’s another weird one—being in a motel room. An empty, sterile, anonymous motel room.”

  “You sleep well in motel rooms?”

  “Well, no. But I feel comfortable in them. They soothe me.”

  She takes the duct tape out one last time and moves it to the other side. The two of them are crouched so close together their faces are almost touching. Her elbow grazes him as she jockeys things around.

  He says, “I love this backpack, Dana. This backpack has appeared in all five of my favorite dreams. But I’m telling you, whatever finally helps you sleep peacefully, it isn’t going to be in this backpack.”

  “Why?” she says with mock surprise. “What’s missing?”

  “They don’t make ziplocks for everything.”

  “You do know they come in gallon and snack size now, right?”

  “Some things can’t be bagged.”

  “Like what?”

  “Luck.”

  “You’re so superstitious.”

  “It’s not superstition. It’s respect for the inexplicable, and actually you’ve got plenty.”

  “Name one example.”

  “All those things you try to help you sleep. What is that if not voodoo?”

  Everything is back in her backpack now, and she zips the top shut.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. She looks tired, but Ian is smiling, and his eyes are soft on her.

  She says, “You’re probably right. But for tonight at least, I better stick with my twenty-three steps. I want to be well rested for work and your sister’s wedding tomorrow. I know how important it is to you.”

  He shrugs, still smiling. “We’ll see.”

  “Besides”—she stands up, hefting the pack—“you’ve given me a project. You know how I like a project.”

  The intercom rings then, and she turns and puts her hand on the doorknob, but he rises quickly and lays a hand against the door to stop her opening it. He presses the button on the intercom. “Avocasa!” he says. “Enter to be delighted!” Then he releases the button and lays his hand on Dana’s shoulder. Pieces of birdseed drop from their clothes to the floor, a soft ticking like the end of a rain.

  “Dana,” he says. “I know it’s not the birds. Or the frogs. Or your insomnia.”

  She keeps her chin level, but she cuts her eyes away to a point just beyond his face. She says, “I just think we should wait a while.”

  “I know uncertainty is not your best thing, but the truth is, anything can happen. The treatment could work and I could live to be a hundred, still teaching surfing and annoying my ne
ighbors with flamenco music. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow on my way to Rite Aid to buy more Boost.”

  “Not if I buy you more Boost.”

  He closes his eyes and presses a last kiss on her forehead. They can hear footsteps approaching in the hall. He takes his hand off the door.

  “Have fun tonight,” she says, and then she steps out into the long beige hallway and turns left, away from his guests, and walks away without looking back. The sound of his Spanish music shimmies and pumps behind her and fades a bit each time she turns the corner, turns the corner, past the dark brown doors and the one little welcome mat, one little wreath, past her own door to the elevator to the garage.

  The Boost, it turns out, is at the end of an aisle stocked disconcertingly with bedpans and adult diapers, and it takes her a second, standing there in the fluorescent light, to make herself move to take some from the shelf. The Muzak from above is something familiar but slowed down, and played with a tinny-sounding piano that makes her sad. The cans are grouped in packs of twelve, slipcovered in a cardboard case with a handle at the top, and when she places her hands on a pair at eye level on the top shelf and slides them back and off, taking their weight like a village girl with two buckets of water, she sees that there, pressed against the white perforated metal back wall of the shelving where the two cases of Boost used to be, is a single boxed pregnancy test.

  Dana looks up and down the aisle for other boxes like it, but of course there are none. It is an aisle for the sick and dying. The box is pink, with a picture of a delighted woman holding the white plastic test stick, and a band of blue reads, “Second Test Free Inside.” On the shelf on either side of it is a thin furry strip of dust, where the cases of Boost never reach.

  Back in the garage she finds the door to Ian’s green Volkswagen unlocked, as she knew she would, and she places the cases of Boost on his seat. Her apartment is dark now, but her window is still cracked and through it she can hear the flamenco music and the laughter from his party. She passes through her dark living room and flicks on the lights in her bathroom, and from her backpack she withdraws the boxed test. The instruction sheet crackles as she takes it out. She examines the pictograms. She reads the tiny print. She pulls down her pants and holds the stick between her legs, staring at her socks on the floor on the blue circle of rug. A faint chorus of cheers floats in from Ian’s party, and she recaps the stick and sets it facedown on the counter and fastens her pants and then flushes and washes her hands, soaping thoroughly. When she has dried them, she flips it over and sees that she is in fact pregnant.