by PW Cooper
Jeffrey hadn't had a chance yet to meet any of the others. But he was in no hurry.
He brought the last of his bags up to his new room. It wasn't much of a place, three cramped rooms and a closet, the only toilet a communal unit down the hall. A narrow bedroom adjoined the main living area on one side, and a tight kitchen on the other.
Michael's things were still scattered about the room. He hadn't owned much. There were a few threadbare clothes in the dresser. The food in the kitchen, what little there was, had all gone bad a long time ago. Jeffrey found a half-empty milk carton that reeked of decay and poured out black and green when he emptied it down the sink. There was nothing else in the fridge but a few spherical fruits, now unidentifiable. There were boxes of cereal and a half-empty bag of tortilla chips in the cupboard.
There were a couple of CD's in a stack beside the old black-and-white TV set. Nothing too interesting, a couple of alternative rock albums that had been big in the nineties. The clear plastic jewel cases were scuffed and cracked, and the discs weren't much better. Michael had either had them a long while or else bought them used somewhere. Jeffrey didn't see a CD player anywhere.
The bedroom was a bit cluttered. Jeffrey took a halfhearted survey of the items there, his investigation having had, by this time, taken on a feeling of glazed automation. A few articles of clothing, so thick with dust that they all looked like they were made of gray cotton. A pair of winter boots beside the bed, tongues spilled out dog-like and laces tangled. A stack of mail, most of it opened, and none of it appearing to be of any significance.
There was a pile of paperback novels on the bedside table. Murder mysteries, thrillers, a few romance novels. He read through the titles: Call of Innocence, The Virgin Eclipse, The Bear and the Tiger, Unanimous Sanctions, and Mirror of the Broken Heart.
Jeffrey stared at the last book. There was something inside the cover, written in neat little letters on the upper right-hand corner of the title page: Alice Burke, age 14.
He put the book down. How had it gotten here? What was Alice's connection to Michael? He tried to remember how well the two of them had known each other, but couldn't think of any time when they'd been especially close. He put the book away.
He looked inside the little table's top drawer. A half-empty box of condoms, a pack of mint chewing gum, a small book of crossword puzzles which appeared to have had most of its pages torn out, and a bottle of Astroglide personal lubricant. He shut the drawer.
Jeffrey sat on the edge of the bed. The springs groaned under his weight, and sagged low.
From his perspective at the far edge of the room, the short and turbulent life of Michael Conner seemed a sad small thing to witness. And there was his own life, neatly packaged in three gray bags slumping formlessly beside the door. It was then that he realized that the apartment had no windows.
* * *
11:44 pm, July 5th, 2002
The old TV flickered and, with a static-choked roar of canned applause, the late night talk show host waved the audience off toward the next commercial break. Jeffrey muted the television with a push of a button on the remote. Colorless images of steam-bathed fast food slid by him.
Jeffrey gazed up at the screen, eyes half-lidded and heavy.
His bags were vomiting their contents onto the floor, half-unpacked. Already he'd grown restless, eager to move on. Unable to think of anywhere else to go, and lacking in any sort of alcoholic or narcotic means or relaxation, he'd turned on the TV. He watched, toying with a small bronze medallion hung on a white and green cord. It was all he had left. The tacky souvenir was all that remained of his high school years, that and a piece of stamped and signed paper in a faux-leather cover. He dangled the medallion against his nose, holding the cord stretched tight between his thumb and forefinger.
Money. How much money did he have?
The rent was absurd, of course, but he had enough money for a year or two if he kept his expenses down. Though there were student loans from San Diego still to be dealt with.
He'd spent the morning begging for his job, yanking out every excuse and apology he knew. The supervisor eventually relented, with the warning there would be no more chances, and no more leniency. Ted Hemingway had said nothing when he saw Jeffrey, just set his mouth and cast his eyes back down towards the shovel in his hands. He hadn't made any friends, but he still had his job. At least he still had that.
At some point in the past year, he couldn't say exactly when, Jeffrey had realized with a kind of horrible certainty that he wasn't as smart as he wanted to be. He wasn't lucky enough or talented enough or driven enough to do anything of worth. He wasn't special, he was just another person falling into the great pattern of things. He was not going to be what he wanted to be. There was only this. He took out the picture of Michael and he looked at it. He stared at the boy's face in the photograph. What had he been thinking about? What was behind those eyes? He let his gaze drift back towards the television set. Jeffrey stared at the flickering screen before him, hardly seeing it, and he wondered.
He lay his head back, closed his eyes and, eventually, finally, he slept.
Someday When We All Grow Up
The rainwater ran down the glass like hot wax along the side of a candle.
Gena Riley watched the rain fall on the stone steps of the Verden Public Library, watched dirty water pooling in the crease of each step and in a wide arc at the foot of the stairs. She tapped her fingers on the old oak checkout desk and stared at the door, waiting for something to happen. She looked once more at the clock, wishing the hands faster around the impassive face. Still another hour to go.
The name-tag pinned to her breast itched horridly. Hi! I'm Gena. She felt like she was a new person, standing there behind the desk which she'd so often stood in front of as a child. Books had been her escape when she was a little girl and she still regarded the old building, all its musty stacks and well-worn volumes, with great affection, though she'd not read for pleasure in years. Books were too slow, too disconnected. She could no longer find herself in them. Books were nothing more than another way to obliterate the self, to pour it out into a fictional simulacrum – someone built for life, someone with an arc and an ending and not just going on. She couldn't bear the lie of it.
Of course, none of that had stopped her getting the job. It had been easier than she'd expected, the whole process of it. And now she was employed. She was “at work,” and felt a terrible comfort in that.
A car flashed past in the street outside, red and white lights spilling in the reflective sheen of the rain-slick pavement.
* * *
The tires hummed on the road. A hot wind rushed through her hair.
Gena laughed. She'd never ridden in a convertible before. It was exciting and more than a little terrifying; she felt like she might tumble out at any moment. They sped along the crest of a low hill, and the green valley below rolled like a postcard of some lost European highland. The sun burned low in the sky, billowing hot and bright and red as it fell slowly towards the horizon.
Welcome to the New World.
She let out a whoop and undid her seatbelt, feeling drunk on the car's naked velocity, feeling invincible. She stood up in her seat and grabbed hold of the windshield's edge, hollering at the wavering black tongue of the road as it spilled out before them.
“Jesus, Gena!” Trevor snatched at the back of her shorts, hooking his finger through a belt-loop and yanking her back down into her seat. “You wanna fall out?” he shouted.
Molly twisted in her seat and pushed down her wide dark sunglasses and laughed. “Spoilsport!”
“Yeah!” Gena stuck her tongue out. “You know what you are, Trevor? You're a stick in the mud!”
“And you're a crazy bitch!” he shot back, hanging on to the edge of the seat in front of him, white knuckled.
Molly laughed again, and pushed the petal down. The car growled, and they speed up, racing wildly towards the falling sun.
* * *
Her mother shouted: “Would you just drop it!”
Her father snapped back: “Jesus! That's your answer for everything, to just forget about it!”
Gena turned the pages of the newspaper. She ignored her parents. They'd been fighting all morning, more than usual. She wrestled with the newspaper, forcing it flat out on the table with a sweep of her forearm. Her cereal bowl was nearly empty. She hated it when they fought.
There was a review of an Ithaca theater's performance of a gender-switched version of The Taming of the Shrew. She looked at the black and white dot-matrix image of a man and a woman in cheap flannel semblances of Elizabethan garb. The man's mouth was open, his arms thrown out in oratory posture. The caption read: Alan Johnson excels as the gender-bending Katherine. She skimmed over the article, skipping down the page to the movie reviews.
“Look, just leave it, alright! I'll take care of it!” Mom said, biting back a mouthful or resentment.
“Fine! Fine! I don't know why I even bother!” Dad dumped his armful of papers on the table.
“Very mature, Nathan!”
“Oh, why don't you just fuck off!”
Gena's eyes flicked up from the paper. Her mother had her hands on her hips, her mouth open in shock. Her father's face was red, flushed with either embarrassment or anger or both. They glared at each other – looking daggers at each other, Gena thought, finally realizing what that expression really meant. “Would you please stop fighting!” she burst out, unable to stop herself.
They looked at her, as if noticing her presence for the first time.
She pushed her chair back with a scrape and rushed out of the room, dumping the milky remains of her breakfast in the sink as she fled.
* * *
The rain slashed down the stone walls, threading through the mortared cracks between the heavy gray blocks. And inside, all those books like a grand storehouse of man's answers to the first scribbled Neanderthal paintings.
The books on the shelving cart were standing with their spines up. Her fingers walked across them, stepping from title to title, tilting each book back in turn so that the cover showed itself to her. C is for Corpse, Death in the Parish, several books of the Primrose Sister's Murder Club series, whatever that was – she pictured a pair of elderly ladies in floral print dresses creeping into some vast dark house through the garden window, shining knives in their bony hands, and she grinned.
Those sorts of books seemed mostly to go out to older women, who took them in blocks of at least half-a-dozen. How they found the time to read them all, Gena couldn't say, no more than she could account for whatever it was that had made them so bloodthirsty.
“You know, you could shelve some of those if you want.”
Gena started. The Assistant Librarian was watching her from across the room. His name was Carl.
She nodded, gathering up an armful of books. “Sorry.”
Carl shrugged, “Whatever.” He leaned against the counter opposite her. She found herself unable to look away. His curly blond pop-star hair didn't seem a proper match for his angular features, but the affect was nevertheless striking. Looks aside, though, there was something that didn't seem quite right about him. She just couldn't put her finger on it.
He followed her back into the stacks when she picked up a stack of books for shelving. “What kinda name is Gena, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“I dunno. Gena. I've never heard that name before, is all.”
“Well... you heard it now.”
“I guess I have.” He smiled at her. Carl had an easy smile. He took the book from her hands and returned it to its place on the shelf.
She stared at him. “How long have you been working here? If you don't mind me asking.”
“Why would I mind?”
She shrugged.
“About two years. Every since graduation.”
“Graduation from what?”
“Cornell."
“Wow. What was your major?”
“Engineering.”
“What does that have to do with working at a library?”
“Nothing at all.” He grinned.
She grinned back and found her eyes caught up in his. The book in her hand missed the shelf and fell to the floor. She yelped, trying too late to catch it and in the process dropping the whole armload of books. She blushed, putting a hand to her mouth. “Oh God...”
Carl laughed. “Jeez, Gena, where are you going with that?”
* * *
“Where's she going?” Trevor leaned out over the side of the car and peered into the woods.
Gena reached back and slapped him on the arm. “Shut up, Trevor!”
“What?” His eyes found hers in the off kilter mirror, his face a mask of innocence.
Gena rolled her eyes. “Just sit back already. She won't be long.”
He groaned dramatically, kicking his legs up to hang them over the door.
Gena scanning the treetops. She found that, if she flicked her eyes back and forth quick enough, she could almost fool herself into thinking that she was still moving. The silence had closed in on her the very minute that Molly had shut off the engine. The tires crunching on the gravel shoulder, the rasp of the key turning back and sliding out, then that gaping silence. Molly had hopped out over the side, not even bothering with the door. She'd thrown a quick “Be right back, guys,” over her shoulder, and disappeared into the dense patch of shrubs and scrabbly ironwood trees which filled the dip in the hills. That had been just a few minutes ago.
The sunset painted the greenery in lush reds and yellows. The tops of the trees waved in an imperceptible wind.
Trevor groaned, bending one leg back so his knee nearly touched his breastbone. “Ugh, it's getting late.”
Gena looked at her watch. “Quite whining already. It's barely even eight o'clock. The sun's not even down yet.”
“Yeah? Maybe I've got stuff to do.”
Gena snorted. “Like what? I'm the one with the job.”
Trevor stared vaguely upwards at the darkening sky. “Does that really count as a job? Part time at the library...”
She laughed. “What? How dare you!”
“Oh, you think it is?”
Gena made a face, “Well, they're paying me, aren't they?”
He made a small noncommittal noise, “Hardly.”
Gena pressed her face against the headrest and looked silently back at her friend. He'd changed so much in the past year. Being away had done him good. He'd been so quiet when they were both in High School, when there had been all those rumors about his “orientation” going around. She remembered one day he had shown up for class with a bloody lip and the collar of his shirt torn. She'd seen people giving him nasty looks in the halls, like he'd done something to them, betrayed them somehow. He'd gotten so quiet, hardly spoke to anybody, not even to her. Some of her friends had started dropping hints, insinuations about what it meant for her to be seen with “someone like Trevor.” She hadn't even known how to respond. She'd barely been able to stand going back into that dull gray building; every morning when she stepped through the doors she felt her disappointment with the world gathering around her. Why did people act the way they did?
She reached back and poked Trevor's leg.
He lifted his head off the seat and looked at her, brows knit. “Yeah?”
“Nothing.”
He poked her back, right on the forehead. She grinned, and batted his hand away.
Molly came trampling back through the brush, kicking and thrashing and cursing at the tangling undergrowth. She flopped back over the door, once again declining to open it, and let out a heavy exhalation. “Jeez,” she groaned, “what a fucking jungle.”
Trevor pulled himself back upright. “What the hell were you doing out there?”
“I had to pee!” Molly said, quite dramatically, flicking her zipper up and down.
“Ahh!” Trevor pulled a face, “I so didn't need to know that.”
&nbs
p; “But you did ask,” Molly shot back, her voice a sing-song chant.
“Ugh, why do girls always talk about peeing?”
“Uh... 'cause girl are gross?” Gena stuck out her tongue.
“Oh, right. How could I have forgotten.” Trevor rolled his eyes.
Molly righted herself in the driver's seat and slid the keys back into the ignition.
“Where are we even going?” Trevor asked.
Molly pushed down her sunglasses and pointed towards the sunset. “That way.”
* * *
Gena stared up at the ceiling, listening through the dark to raised voices. She brushed the hair away from her face, spitting out a bit that was stuck on her tongue. It was a miserably hot summer night, the crushing sort of heat which wormed down your throat and seeped in under your doorway. She'd stripped down to her panties, but still felt like she was roasting. Her blankets were tangled and clinging to her bare skin.
The voices again, louder. She couldn't understand what they were saying. She didn't have to. She knew the tone well enough not to need the words.
She stripped away the clinging blankets caught about her and crept to the doorway. The knob was cold on her hand – she pulled the door open a fraction, just enough to put her ear to the crack.
Her father's voice. He was angry.
Her blood ran cold, as it always did whenever her parents really got into it. She opened the door a little more, putting one arm across her breasts and pushing her face into the space between the door and the frame. There was light coming from the far room, flicking out whenever one of her parents stomped past the lamp.
Her mother's voice, just as angry.
Their shadow-selves writhed on the floor.
Her father said something. He sounded bitter, his voice seething. Mom snapped back, venom dripping from every word. Something was happening, Gena could feel it. This wasn't just another fight.
She snatched a t-shirt from the open dresser drawer and pulled it on over her head. The cotton clung to her skin. She took a step into the hallway and waited there – wanting to go out further unable to move. Something crashed against the floor and the front door banged open. The voices moved outside together, so muffled that she could hardly hear them.