This Is Where We Live

by Janelle Brown

  Sixteen stories below, Claudia could see office workers scurrying along to their lunch meetings, jackets flung over their shoulders, and a fruit cart vendor selling coconut and mango chunks to women in seasonally ambitious sundresses. Claudia finished her soda and turned away from the window. She stepped over a stack of bubble-wrapped appliances and walked to the kitchen table. There, underneath a pile of hanging bags, was her laptop case. She turned on the computer and loaded up her Screenwriter program, quickly finding the place where she’d stopped writing the day before.

  Four weeks in, and she was already a third of the way through a first draft; at this rate, she’d be done with the screenplay by late spring. She still wasn’t sure exactly what the ending was going to be, but she knew it would be an intimate movie, something that could be inexpensively shot on a hand-held camera with only three characters and a few locations. It would be a relationship story but not a love story; a chronicle of modern life, and probably the most personal thing she’d ever written. She might even be able to finance the production herself, with the last dregs of the Beautiful Boy money, if she put herself on a tight budget and tracked every penny she spent.

  Sometimes she felt like she was winding the clock back a decade, returning to a simpler ideal from a long-forgotten time. It was odd—she was renting instead of owning, she was writing a tiny indie movie instead of parading across a studio lot, descending the Hollywood ladder rather than climbing it, living on a burrito budget with no sign of financial relief in the future. And yet, instead of feeling like a failure, she mostly felt liberated to reimagine her existence, to do something she cared deeply about. She felt more like Claudia than she had in a long time.

  It was possible that she was finally starting to be OK again.

  Afternoon had crossed over into dusk by the time she finally disengaged from her computer screen. She loaded up her e-mail program and sent the day’s pages to RC.

  Thirty pages down, seventy or so to go. Do you think this scene is too expositional? Willing to trade free babysitting for your expertise, as long as you’ll provide full body armor and all-you-can-eat Valium.

  She hit SEND, hesitated, and then clicked CHECK NEW MAIL. Her e-mail program churned away, retrieving her correspondence. She could feel her heartbeat picking up momentum, from steady kick-drum to high-hat cymbal, as the messages began to roll in.

  There it was. Another e-mail from Jeremy. The third this week, the ninth since his initial contact two weeks before. She hadn’t answered any of them, not trusting herself, and yet they still poured in, each one longer and more confessional than the next. It was as if she were being courted by a stranger, someone who little resembled the husband who had walked out the door into the rain three months ago. At first she had been upset, and then angry—she’d deleted e-mails four and five without reading them at all—and then simply confused. But by this one, the ninth, she was mostly just curious to see what he had to say next.

  I’m in London now. Still alone, in case you’re wondering. And I know you’ll probably never forgive me—and if you don’t, I deserve it—but I hope that you will. I could write a ten-page e-mail here trying to explain why I did the stupid things I did—I’m guessing a therapist would charge me thousands of dollars to tell me it had something to do with abandonment issues, or fear of commitment, or the rootlessness and impossible expectations that Jillian and Max instilled in me—but what’s really important is that I now know how deluded I was. And I’ve finally figured out what I want: a real family, for the first time in my life. With you and me at the center.

  Claude—the rules that circumscribed our world seem obsolete now. And where before I thought it was impossible to live up to rules at all so why bother trying, now I realize we should be making up our own as we go along. Define our own principles, ones that can coexist with what the world demands of us. Just—I want to make them together, with you. And I’m ready to compromise if that’s what it takes.

  I’m booked on a flight back to Los Angeles, arriving in town tomorrow afternoon. I could probably stay with Max, but I’d rather stay with you, if you’ll have me. I can sleep on the couch, or in the guest bedroom if it’s been fixed up by now?

  I love you. I hope you know that.

  Do you still love me?

  Jeremy

  Claudia spun in her chair and surveyed the loft. She hadn’t located any of her lamps yet, so the room was illuminated only by the refracted lights of the city. The piles of boxes loomed in the eerie glow, the contents of her entire life encased in packing tape and old newspaper. She knew she should get a move on and unpack, but something held her back. It just seemed like such a monumental job, one that she couldn’t possibly imagine tackling on her own quite yet.

  And wasn’t it Jeremy’s fault that she was having to unpack at all? He didn’t even know where she was living. How unfair of him to expect to show up and be let in the front door. There was no room for him here; there was barely enough room for herself.

  She turned back to the computer and typed quickly, letting the anger write for her.

  Hi—

  I sold our house, so don’t show up on the front doorstep and expect to find me there. You’ll just annoy the new owners.

  Claudia

  She clicked SEND and stood up. Took three steps toward the kitchen before spinning around and moving toward the loft stairs, and then stopped again, having already lost track of what she planned to do.

  She’d always thought that there would be some clarity at this point in her life, something concrete she could point to that might explain where she had been and was going, but all she could see from here was a tangle of infinite complexity and complications, a snarl of abandoned dreams and naïve ideals and lingering hopes inextricably woven with flinty reality. She held this knot in her hand, realizing for the first time that she might never be able to realign it into a logical, linear rope.

  Did she still love Jeremy? Of course she did. That wasn’t something that could just be shut off like a broken water main or a bloody nose. Did she still need him? That didn’t seem to be the right question either. Anyway, for the first time in more than four years, she felt like maybe she didn’t. At least, not for the reasons she used to.

  No, the relevant question was whether she still wanted him.

  She sat back down at her computer and typed quickly, before she could think better of it.

  Hi again—

  If you need a place to sleep for a night—ONE NIGHT—you will find me in The Luxist, downtown. Apartment 1621. This is not an invitation to move back in, but you do own half the couch so I guess you have the right to sleep there if you need to.

  She paused, then added a few last lines.

  I appreciate what you’ve said. Don’t think it has gone unheard. But I reserve the right to see if anything has really changed. Frankly, you have to give me a good reason to trust you again.

  The e-mail sent, she stood in the middle of the darkening room, surveying the task before her. She located a desk lamp hidden behind the couch, but none of the wall outlets seemed to be hooked up to the electrical grid. As she was on her hands and knees, crawling around the baseboards in search of a working plug, her phone rang. She let the caller leave a message on her answering machine.

  Thees is Dolores Hernandez and I need you to fix toilet, OK? Also, ees not good smell in sink. There was no please or thank you, just a fumbling click and a long buzz of telephone static.

  Despite this, despite everything, Claudia found herself smiling.

  The light from the curtainless windows woke her up at dawn, a golden sunrise reflecting off the mirrored façade of the office building across the street. She spent the morning frantically unpacking. In the light of day, it seemed critically important that Jeremy not arrive to see her world in disarray, but to present a unified front of one. I’m doing just fine without you, the loft needed to say.

  It took longer than she thought to put everything away, considering the diminuitive size of
the space and the diminished state of her post-fire belongings. Sixteen floors below, the city came to life, the police sweeps moving the stray homeless back toward the invisible confines of skid row, the buses groaning through with morning commuters, the echo of horns ricocheting off walls of sixty-story-high skyscrapers. The sun passed over from the east side of the street toward the west and was creeping its way into her loft by the time she finally hung the last picture on the wall.

  The doorman buzzed up to let her know she had a visitor just as she was breaking down the remaining cardboard boxes. She splashed cold water on her face—there was no time to change—and then sat waiting on the couch for her husband to arrive.

  She counted to eleven before the doorbell rang, and then added another five just to keep him waiting, and still had to remind herself to walk toward the door in a measured manner. She knew Jeremy would be able to hear her footsteps from the hallway and would use them to try to read into her state of mind, and as yet she wanted to give him nothing. She felt as if she were about to open a door to a blind date. Even as she opened the door she half expected not to recognize the person who stood behind it.

  “Hi,” Jeremy said.

  He wore well-tailored clothes that looked like they belonged to someone else—someone more put together and self-assured than the Jeremy she remembered. His hair was shorter too; the long curls that used to fall across his eyes had been trimmed away to expose pale temples and vulnerable pink earlobes. He looked like a prom date who had dressed up to impress someone’s parents; all he lacked was an orchid corsage in a clear plastic box. And yet beneath this new formality he was still, somehow, the old Jeremy, with his wry half-smile and hesitant slump to the left.

  “Hi,” she said, and stepped a few feet back, giving him room to enter. She could see him measuring the distance she had put between them, trying to discern whether she was going to allow him to touch her and deciding not to gamble on it. He walked politely through the space she left and entered the loft.

  He walked toward the living space and stood there, still holding his bag. He looked down at their old leather couch and chipped coffee table, and then up at the air ducts overhead, as if trying to make sense of these half-familiar surroundings. It felt, to Claudia, like a leaded weight had landed on the room and was pushing down on them both from above, the pressure making it difficult to feel anything clearly.

  Jeremy cleared his throat, as if about to deliver a prepared speech. “I just want to start by saying—” he began.

  Claudia realized that she wasn’t ready to hear what he had to say. “I only have a few minutes—” she interrupted.

  He frowned and tried again. “I’ve really missed you—”

  “—I have to go fix a toilet at Dolores’s house,” she finished.

  Jeremy set his bag on the floor. “Why are you fixing Dolores’s toilet?”

  “It’s a long story,” she said curtly.

  She knew she was being cruel, and she waited for him to grow indignant. But he mostly looked baffled, and a little bit wounded. Maybe he has changed, she suddenly thought.

  “Anyway—”

  Claudia picked up her keys and her laptop bag, anxious to escape the tension in the room. “I should go. Dolores is waiting.” This did feel like a blind date, the bad kind, a strained encounter between two strangers who could find no way to intersect with each other. “I’ll be gone for the rest of the day, but feel free to stay here without me. Or go out if you need to. I’ll leave a key with the doorman.”

  “Wait.” Jeremy sat down on the couch. “Can we try this again? I didn’t want it to be like this.”

  “What did you expect it to be like?” Her words were a thinly veiled threat, and she watched him slump under the accusation in them. She stood there, daring him to respond, but she wasn’t enjoying her moment of victory at all. Instead, she fixated on a new expression of weariness that hung from the tender thin skin below his eyes. He looked older, as if he’d lost his joy, and—without thinking—she felt the urge to hug him tight, like a child, just to make him laugh again. She resisted the impulse.

  “I don’t know. Not this awful,” he said. “Everything can’t be dead, can it?”

  “It might just be too late for us, Jeremy,” she said.

  “I know. But aren’t you willing to at least try?”

  It wasn’t until his face changed—lightening with a faint ray of hope—that she realized she’d put down her keys and her laptop. She moved to the sink to pour herself a glass of water and then stood in the dark recesses of the kitchen, looking at Jeremy silhouetted against the windows. “Are you thirsty?” she asked, instead of answering his question. “I have beer and soda.”

  “Water’s fine,” he said.

  She handed him a glass of tap water and they both drank in silence. Jeremy politely cupped the underside of the glass in his palm to catch any drips of condensation. He was trying too hard; it made Claudia uncomfortable. The sun poured through the wall of windows, casting parallelograms of light across the bamboo flooring, and the air-conditioning clicked on as the loft began to warm up.

  “You look great,” Jeremy said softly. “It’s good to see you.”

  She looked down at her sweats and dirty T-shirt, her skin covered with dust from the move. “Thanks,” she said. Now that she wasn’t escaping out the door, she wasn’t sure what to say. “Anyway. What are your plans? Do you have any?”

  “I’m not sure. There was this guy, Julian, before I left. He does music licensing, and he wanted to work with me. I thought I’d give him a call, see if he could give me an entry-level job. There’s good money in it.”

  “But you’re still planning to play music?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s time to give up on that.”

  “Don’t,” she said, surprised by the softness of her own voice. “That would be a terrible waste.”

  Jeremy nodded absently, absorbing this, and then stood to wander restlessly around the loft. He let his hand trace along the surface of the chairs, the couch, the table, as if he were testing whether or not they were really there.

  “So. You sold the house,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He was quiet for a minute. “I don’t understand,” he burst out. “I thought you loved our house. I thought the whole point of … everything that happened … was about trying not to lose it.”

  “There’s a difference between losing your house involuntarily and choosing to leave it,” she said.

  “No, no. Of course. I see.” The expression on his face suggested that he didn’t, but was trying his hardest. He gazed around him, looking at the photos of Claudia’s family that hung on the wall. Unease filled his face as he realized that the documentation of their life together—the wedding photos, his portrait of Jillian—had been amputated from this new home. Claudia wondered whether he had expected her to bring his belongings along with her to display, like artifacts in a museum.

  “Your things are boxed up and stored downstairs, in the garage,” she explained. “I didn’t throw anything away.” She hesitated, recalling several trash bags’ worth of odds and ends that had ended up on the curb. “Well, maybe a few things. I got a little worked up one afternoon, and … felt the need to pare back. You know.”

  “Pare back. Uh-huh.” Jeremy raised a skeptical eyebrow, and against her better judgment she found herself smiling. He smiled back, finally relaxing into a person she recognized. “I guess this place—it’s kind of small, isn’t it?”

  “It’s plenty big for one person,” she said.

  “Right.” He moved to the bottom of the stairs and gazed up at the sleeping loft. Then he turned around and walked over to the windows to take in the view. “But it could probably fit two, if you wanted it to?” he asked, looking out over downtown.

  She heard a strange hiccup in his voice and realized he was on the verge of tears.

  “Don’t.” It came out as a sort of wail. “I don’t think I can take it if you st
art crying now. I’ve already cried too much, Jeremy.”

  He pushed a thumb into the corner of his eye, pressing his tear duct closed. “I’m sorry, Claude,” he said. “I’m so sorry—”

  “I know,” she said. “But I’m just not ready to talk about everything yet. I don’t know when I will be. If I ever will be.”

  But she came and stood beside him at the window, and together they looked out at the city set before them. This far inland, you couldn’t see the blue expanse of sea, but if you squinted hard at a slice of horizon wedged between two skyscrapers, you could almost make out the coastline in the distance. Claudia let herself adjust to Jeremy’s presence again, surprised at how he could feel both familiar and new at the same time. The plate glass fogged from their combined breath, and then cleared again, bringing the view in and out of focus.