Emergency Contact

by Mary H. K. Choi

  Penny thought again about Mark. Mark, who wore polo shirts on dates and only read self-help books that you could buy at the airport, from The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People to Who Moved My Cheese? And the old standby The 4-Hour Workweek.

  Good Mark.

  Uncomplicated Mark.

  Mark whose calls she’d sent to voicemail twice today.

  Sam absentmindedly patted his cowlick down, showing a flash of white above his armpit.

  Even Sam’s armpit was hot.

  “Do you want to have dinner with us?” Jude asked him.

  “Can’t,” he said, and stood up suddenly. “Work.”

  Jude nodded, her disappointment apparent. “Maybe next time?”

  “Sure,” he said distractedly as he excused himself.

  • • •

  “Daaaaaamn,” whispered Mallory, ogling Sam as he left.

  Daaaaaamn, thought Penny.

  “I didn’t know Uncle Sam was such an intellectual,” Mallory breathed, fanning herself dramatically with her hand.

  “Ew, stop.” Jude swatted her best friend’s leg. “That’s literally my father’s brother.”

  “Former stepbrother, by marriage, for, like, five minutes,” corrected Mallory. “And he’s not old.”

  “He’s twenty-one,” said Jude.

  “First cousins marry,” said Mallory.

  “Wow . . . ,” said Jude, shaking her head.

  “What?” shot Mallory. “Seriously, what’s the deal? He’s so hot. Dark, but hot. And you.” Mallory turned to Penny. “What’s with your awkward bullshit and then pulling out your flirtation A game?”

  “Yeah, you guys seemed to get along,” said Jude. Both pairs of eyes studied Penny with new interest.

  “I’m being neighborly,” Penny demurred. She turned to Mallory. “I can be friendly as long as strangers don’t go rummaging through my personal effects.”

  “Ha,” Mallory said. “Whatever, what’s his type?”

  “Mal,” warned Jude.

  “What?” Mallory blinked innocently.

  “Mallory, you are not allowed to go for my uncle,” said Jude.

  “Allowed?” said Mallory. “But what if he goes for me? Uncles love me.”

  “Don’t.” Jude turned to face her friend. “I mean it. You know I don’t need any more drama with my family right now. I’m invoking an ironclad friendship ask.”

  “Family?” retorted Mallory. “I’m about as related to Sam as you are at this point.”

  “You know the rules. Ironclad asks don’t have to make sense,” said Jude, waving her hand dismissively. Her mouth was a firm thin line. Penny knew that face. It was when you were so mad you had to train everything to keep still or you’d cry.

  “Whoa,” said Mallory. “Jude Louisa Lange. Do you have sexual feelings for your former uncle by marriage?”

  “Stop!” hissed Jude back.

  “It’s the only explanation,” countered Mallory.

  “Ew. No. That’s not it at all. . . .” Jude sucked down the last of her coffee. “Friends hooking up with family makes things awkward and complicated. So can you not?”

  “Aw, babe,” said Mallory, finally wrapping her arms around Jude. “Okay. Ironclad friendship ask invoked. You can’t fault a girl for wanting to be your best friend and your aunt.”

  Jude laughed.

  Penny eyed the two girls. Either Jude did have a crush on Sam and wasn’t admitting it, or something was up with her family for real. She couldn’t imagine Mallory backing down easily otherwise. Penny recorded the information in a new folder in her head.

  “Besides,” continued Jude. “I think he had a rough summer too.”

  “Why?” asked Mallory.

  “Well, he didn’t exactly tell me and he’s impossible to spy on most of the time, but . . .” Jude opened Instagram on her phone. “Look . . .” She searched and found the page of a MzLolaXO and kept scrolling.

  “I think he has girl trouble . . . ,” said Jude.

  Penny wondered why “girl trouble” meant some dude had dating drama and that “women’s trouble” was about periods.

  “Oooh, she’s super hot,” said Mallory.

  MzLolaXO was hot.

  In fact, Lola’s look was psychological warfare. She was pretty, by scientific and mathematical standards. The kind of attractive that compelled cornballs to come out with flouncy terms like “ravishing” or “exquisite” to describe women. They also almost always referred to them as “creatures” and definitely “females.” Lola was long and thin in the way that certain beautiful people “forgot” to eat or else only nibbled on aesthetically pleasing morsels like Ladurée macarons or sliced kiwi.

  But it was also the way she dressed—incidentally—as if her destroyed denim skirt were placed to protect the modesty of a prudish audience. She was Instagram famous in the way that some girls just are. As if they were designed to indiscriminately detonate insecurities in other women. Basically, she was the perfect stylistic match for Sam. No wonder Sam dodged Jude’s offer for dinner. He probably had way better things to do than hang out with them.

  Jude kept swiping, a terrorizing merry-go-round of Lola doing things while looking attractive.

  “But who even has this many selfies?” said Mallory, wrinkling her nose. “Other than a total narcissist.”

  Penny was willing to bet Mallory had more than this many selfies. They admired Lola stretching in a crop top to where the dagger tattoos on her rib cage showed.

  “See,” said Jude. “Sam’s in literally every fifth picture from here. . . .” She continued scrolling up. “All the way to here.”

  “That’s years,” said Mallory, impressed.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” said Jude. “He was in this perfect relationship and now he’s not, and honestly, I’ve been talking to Dr. Greene about it and she thinks he’s depressed.”

  “Dr. Greene is Jude’s therapist,” said Mallory.

  If that were true, depression suited Sam.

  “So, don’t confuse him, Mallory,” she finished. “He’s very vulnerable.”

  Penny thought about the types of girls who loved vulnerable guys. Or else misunderstood ones. They were generally the types to marry serial killers on death row.

  “Fine,” Mal relented. “I have a boyfriend anyway.”

  “Thank you,” said Jude. “You, too.” She nodded at Penny, smiling broadly. “Please don’t date my uncle.”

  “Pfft,” scoffed Mallory.

  Jude reached over and tucked a tangled strand of Penny’s hair behind her ear and patted her cheek.

  SAM.

  Knowing that your only computer was about to crap out on you despite not having nearly enough money to replace it can only be described as horror. Horror and terror. Torror.

  Sam drummed impotently on the trackpad a few times and pounded hard. The pinwheel of death persisted.

  Shit.

  He calmly closed the sticker-covered laptop, briefly considering rolling into a ball and ugly-crying for the rest of the day.

  The ancient machine—his trusted steed since junior year of high school—already didn’t qualify as a laptop because it had to be plugged in or it would die. Plus, the colors bled together on-screen so you felt as though you were on hallucinogens no matter what site you were on.

  But if a computer was at a virtual standstill on the information superhighway, it had to be taken out back and shot.

  Sam breathed deeply and raggedly counted to ten.

  By his tabulations, he didn’t have enough in his checking account to get money out of it. An ATM wouldn’t dignify you with a response unless you had the minimum of twenty bucks and Sam had seventeen dollars. Minus the two bucks for the ATM fee.

  The catch-22 was demoralizing. He needed the laptop to take an online film class through Alamo Community College so he could learn what he couldn’t from YouTube tutorials—how to block a shot like Roger Deakins, the best cinematographer in the world. Or to light in the style of Gordon Wil
lis, who’d DP’d The Godfather. Okay, so he knew he wouldn’t learn exactly that in a sixteen-week course, but forking over the $476.00 for class and access to supplies was cheaper than camera and gear rentals for four months. Only now he couldn’t torrent any of the required watching.

  Sam flexed the toes on his right foot. The sole of his black sneaker was split where it met canvas. He grabbed black gaffer’s tape out of his backpack, tore off a piece, and taped the hole shut. The sticky electrical tape solved most issues—except fried motherboards. Maybe he’d stop going outside altogether. He’d shuffle shoelessly from his bedroom to House and back again—a correspondence-course-taking Sisyphus.

  He checked the clock above the door: two forty-five. That glorious lull between the lunch rush and the four p.m. caffeine fix. The only customer was a short guy with a ridiculously coiffed pointy beard working on his gleaming thirteen-inch MacBook Air, complete with portable laptop stand and extra keyboard. Sam briefly considered mugging him. Even if it was possibly the dumbest idea to rob someone where you not only worked but also lived.

  He listlessly thumbed through the discarded copy of the city’s alt-paper of record, the Austin Chronicle, on the coffee table closest to him. Ever since he’d moved in upstairs, his world had become tiny. He wondered if he still possessed the necessary antibodies to venture outside. Maybe he’d get some ancient disease that we thought we were done with, like polio or smallpox. Did people get smallpox anymore? He needed to read a book once in a while. Isn’t that what people in recovery did? Get a hobby? Christ, “recovery” was so dramatic.

  Sam could have killed a beer right now. Hell, he could tear through a six-pack lickety-split. He thought about the yeasty bite of a Shiner Bock, his mother’s favorite and the first beer he’d ever tasted at six years old, and how it had been months since he’d held a cold one to his mouth.

  Instead he took a long pull from a glass of water and cleaned. He needed something to do with his hands while his thoughts churned. Sam fluffed pillows, bused tables, wiped down counters, recycled the papers, twisted the group handles from the espresso machine, dumped their filter baskets with a series of satisfying snaps, and rinsed everything out with scalding water. He was reassured by the way his knuckles felt tight and parched afterward.

  Sam imagined his rough hands entwined with Lorraine’s. Liar Lorraine. His ex. She’d had beautiful hands. “Hand-model hands” her friends had called them. Long, articulate fingers with slender nail beds. But Sam worshipped her feet. Stubby-toed and flat, she hid them as a policy, refusing to wear sandals in the summer, which only served to make them more desirable. They were hilarious, full of personality. Clever feet that picked pens up from the floor when they thought no one was watching.

  The rest of Lorraine had consistently been too cool for him. As aloof as a black-and-white photo of a French girl. Sam knew from the second they met that he had to ask her out. He had to.

  He was seventeen to her nineteen. She was DJing at a tiny club with no sign called Bassment, wearing a white silky slip dress. Her hair was pale pink and shoulder-length, dyed ultramarine at the tips. Huge swoops of black encircled her shimmering hazel eyes. She was unmistakably sexy. Sexy. Sam hated that word the way other people hated “moist” or “panty,” but there was no other way to describe her. The Great Love of His Life was plain sexy. And terrifying.

  Not that Sam was all the way innocent when they met. From the time he was eleven, he hung out with a ragtag assemblage of derelicts who thought it was hilarious that this little kid had no curfew and drank as much booze as they did. “Little Sam” had a smart mouth and the ladies loved him. He was selfie bait for older drunk chicks.

  There wasn’t a bar that the kid couldn’t get into—he knew everyone, or at least his dad did and he was the spit-and-image of his old man—though precocious as he was, he’d never been in love. That was until he saw Lorraine up there on the dais, neon green headphones, ignoring him. Sam was a goner. Sucker-punched and clobbered.

  He waited an hour to talk to her. Then another. Another two passed.

  At three a.m., when the lights came on, he nodded and asked, “So, where we going?”

  “Food,” she said, tossing her bag at him.

  They drove to a diner, where she devoured a heaping plate of migas. Sam ordered coffee, and when they were finished and walking out into the street, without warning she hoisted herself into his arms, wrapped her legs around him, and kissed him. Sam was stoked—stoked that it was happening and stoked that he’d grown three inches over the summer and could lift her. Her breath tasted of green peppers and cigarettes and her confidence was mind-blowing. His mother used to say you shouldn’t marry anyone you wouldn’t want to divorce, and he understood that now. Lorraine was the emotional equivalent of a hollow-point round; the exit wound was a shit show.

  Sam restocked the almond milk, consolidated the baked goods into a single cake stand, and switched out the bar mops. The new ones smelled good, bleach-clean. He held them under his nose. Sobriety meant a low-level boredom all the time. Taking pleasure in small, repetitive tasks was the big show of the whole day. Sure there weren’t dazzling, dizzying highs anymore, no careening around town with the most enigmatic and emotionally toxic woman he’d ever met. There would be no screwing each other’s brains out in a dazed, compulsive panic, but at least there were clean bar mops. He admired the neatly folded squares of cotton and rearranged one so the blue stripe lined up in the stack.

  Right then, as if she begrudged him this tiny victory, Liar texted him.

  Call me.

  Shit.

  Sam’s hands got clammy when his fight-or-flight response was triggered. Under the right light you could actually see the sheen of moisture appear on his palms. He’d made a time-lapse video of it once.

  He felt equal parts sick and excited when he heard from her after an absence. The last time they spoke was twenty-seven days ago. Just one day more and he would’ve kicked the habit for good. At least that’s what the books on substance abuse told him. He thought he’d turned over a new leaf. In fact, he’d even begun jogging. Okay, so he’d hopped around the block twice in his busted shoes, but he’d cut back to three cigarettes a day, which for him was the same as completing a half marathon.

  He thought about the pressure of her lips on his. The lemony scent of her hair. He closed his eyes and considered their last meeting and the bad ideas that followed. She’d stormed his newly small life and disappeared in a mushroom cloud of devastation. Again.

  After that last run-in, he’d sent three unanswered texts before he’d been sufficiently humiliated. The first because he told himself he wasn’t the type of guy who slept with someone and ghosted. The next two because his stupid brain was gobsmacked and running on a flustered delay. Now boom: Liar on line one.

  This is what she did. It was as if she knew the moment he was able to wake up without wanting to die and couldn’t abide by it.

  Sam stared at the text.

  Call me.

  Three more hours of work to go before he could stew in the dark in his room.

  What the hell was “Call me”?

  Only sadists left that message.

  Sadists and bullies. She might as well have written:

  “Gnaw off your hand.”

  Sam knew he was on the right side of history. Let the record show that she was the cheater. He was the spurned lover, the cuckold, the humiliated, the victim.

  GTFO with your Call Me’s!

  Not that he wasn’t tempted.

  Sam sighed. Maybe if he called she’d tell him where she’d buried his balls and his heart.

  People cheated on people every second of every day all over the world. It’s just that Sam couldn’t believe it had happened to him. By Lorraine no less. His Lorraine.

  Jesus.

  He’d entombed the event of their actual breakup so deep it’d been effectively redacted from memory. Sam leaned on the counter and retrieved the original file from 103 days ago.

  T
hat fateful morning she’d told him she wanted to go to the breakfast taco spot before work. The not-that-good spot on Manor that charged extra for pico de gallo.

  Sam wondered if ordering a michelada with his eggs would be distasteful. He needed something to take the edge off after the night they’d had. They’d doubled-down on martinis after a week of fighting about money and Lorraine’s crazy work schedule. And while they both knew going out was a doomed enterprise, compounded by Sam’s desire to swing by his mom’s, they didn’t care.

  That morning Lorraine’s hair was pulled into a bun. She appeared admirably refreshed, and Sam was grateful that no matter how much dysfunction there was at home, he could rely on his girlfriend to be there for him. He reached under the table to touch her knee when the chips arrived. He’d shoved a few in his mouth before she told him about some guy named Paul from her work.

  It hadn’t meant anything.

  Though it had been building up for some time.

  It had happened more than once.

  Sam reacted by yelling loud enough that parents eating nearby with their young children gave him the stink-eye.

  Lorraine sat there stone-faced.

  “Do you love him?”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Is it something I did?”

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Did it feel good?”

  “Better than me?!!!”

  She wouldn’t tell him his last name. Or where he lived.

  “I don’t love him,” she said.

  “Why, then?” Sam implored. He was sobbing. Inconsolable. Lorraine, on the other hand, rarely ever cried, and turned cold whenever he did. Her expression hardened, as if his outpouring of emotion slaked any desire for her to feel anything.

  In hindsight he was glad it wasn’t the good taco spot because it would have been ruined forever. Anyplace that charged seventy-five cents for condiments could burn in hell. On principle.

  “This,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “This is the problem. Why does it have to be this way with us? Someone having a meltdown. Paul was . . . He was a distraction. I needed to get out of this. Us.”