by Lisa Unger
Much later that night, when the phone jangled me from an uneasy sleep, I knew it was Ace before I answered.
“I heard you were looking for me,” he greeted me, sounding distant like a stranger on an overseas line. “Bad idea, Ridley.”
I didn’t say anything, just hung silent on the line. I thought it was funny, though not in a ha-ha way, that my junkie older brother thought he had better ideas about how to handle things than I did.
“What’s wrong?” he said after maybe a minute.
“I have to talk to you.”
“So talk.”
No, I needed to see his face, look into his eyes. He was bad on the phone, anyway. I could never get a sense of him, what he was thinking, feeling. Not that I had much luck with that in person, either.
“I need to see you.”
More silence. I could hear him breathing. I could hear the street noise that told me he was on a pay phone. I looked at my caller ID display; the word Unavailable glowed there. The word made me feel so lonely, so separate from everyone in my life. I waited. Our phone conversations were generally comprised of these heavy silences.
“Meet me at that diner on West Fourth,” he said finally, as if his better judgment had been pinned to the mat, after a lengthy internal wrestling match.
“How long?” I said, glancing at my clock. It was 1:30 A.M.
“Just come now.”
“Okay.”
I was dressed and out the door in less than ten minutes. I hailed a cab on First and the driver took a left on Twelfth. We glided south on Second; it was quiet and nearly empty, reminding me that Truman Capote had described Second Avenue as having an air of desertion and I had always agreed. We raced by St. Mark’s Church, Telephone Bar. People who don’t know what they’re talking about call New York the city that never sleeps. But it does sleep. Well, it dozes. Windows grow dark; gates come down.
At a light, I watched a middle-aged man in a tweed jacket walk up the avenue. He pulled his jacket tight around him and seemed to huddle against an imaginary wind. He moved quickly, leaning slightly forward, his face blank, eyes straight ahead. Solitary people on the street after a certain hour always seem lost or tired or drunk, rushing toward their destination with an aura of worry. Except for the college students and the people out partying in groups, I always thought of them as people slipping through the cracks, existing on the outer fringes, past concern with early-morning alarms and schedules, deadlines and responsibilities. I always wondered, What leads people to walk the streets alone at night? And here I was, as lost as any of them, albeit in a cab, nursing a bit of a headache. I attributed the dull pain behind my eyes to the bottle of wine I’d nearly finished all by myself.
I hadn’t told anyone except my parents and Jake about the notes and photograph, but after Zelda’s warning I could no longer carry the burden alone. My mind had been racing as I took the stairs back to my apartment. The man in the stairwell last night…was it the same person looking for me this afternoon? I thought of the note I’d found this morning. They lied. Did it mean he knew somehow that I’d been to see my parents? And if so, did he have some way of knowing what we’d discussed? Or was it a lucky guess? Or did it mean something else altogether? I thought briefly about checking in with Jake, maybe telling him that someone had been asking about me in the pizzeria. But I wanted to be alone, surrounded by my things, my space safe and familiar.
Lost in thought, I’m not sure how long the driver had been stopped in front of the diner. A knock on the window brought me back to myself. I saw Ace’s face hovering behind the glass. He opened the door for me as I paid the driver and slid out onto the street.
He looked okay, almost healthy if a bit gaunt and gray. His faded denims sagged from his thin frame, but they were clean. He wore a distressed motorcycle jacket over a black turtleneck. He kissed me and I felt sharp stubble on his face; his breath smelled of peppermint. I took this minimum of personal hygiene as a good sign, because, trust me, he didn’t always smell of peppermint.
Inside the diner, which was busy with people stopping off after clubs or bars for late-night cheeseburgers or pancakes, we slid into a red vinyl booth. A pie case turned, flirting with me, offering key lime pie, cheesecake, tiramisu. Cigarette smoke, burned coffee, fry grease, maple syrup mingled in the air. Conversations hummed and silverware clattered against ceramic plates.
Ace didn’t like it when I looked at him directly for too long. He’d told me he felt like I was inspecting him, and maybe he was right. Looking for signs of an improved or deteriorated condition. Searching for clues of his return to the world, my world, or that he was drifting farther down. I always thought of Ace as existing beneath my life in some secret underworld, as if I had to descend stone stairs to a dungeon and find him by walking through dark corridors and calling his name. So I stole glances at him, looking for new track marks, bruises, lesions, whatever, thinking, How long can he survive? I mean, what is the actual life expectancy of a drug addict? I didn’t know.
“So what’s going on, Ridley? You look tired.”
I told him the whole story, interrupted a couple times by the waitress taking our order and then delivering our cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolate milkshakes. Ace didn’t say a word the whole time, just kept his eyes down, first on the gold-flecked gray tabletop and then on the food in front of him, which he nibbled at and pushed around his plate.
“What did Mom and Dad say to you exactly?” he asked me carefully when I got to the part about seeing our parents.
I repeated the conversation for him pretty much verbatim as I remembered it.
“I left there believing them. Feeling pretty foolish, a little unstable.”
He snorted a little and nodded. “They have a way of making people feel like that,” he said, his bitterness sharp in his tone. “What’s changed?”
I told him about the second note and the newspaper clipping. He was shaking his head when I looked up at him again.
“What?”
“Ridley…” He looked off out the window to his side and watched as the tide of traffic ebbed and flowed up Sixth Avenue. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because…I don’t know. I’m scared.”
He sighed heavily and looked down at his fingers. I tried not to notice the track marks on the back of his hands. I could only imagine what the rest of his body looked like if he’d decided to start using veins there.
“You don’t want the answers to these questions. Trust me.”
There had been, even in my despair of the last two days, a part of me that believed this all might be some kind of mistake. Like those moments after you crash your car, and the impact has jolted you, those few seconds where you still can’t believe it actually happened. I was still in that gap. I had felt such an urgent desire to find my brother, in the hopes that he wouldn’t have any idea what I was talking about. I had wanted him to tell me that I was nuts and ask me for money. This had been my last-ditch effort to hold on to the illusions of my life, and it had failed.
“Ace—” I said. But he stopped me by raising his hand.
“Ask Dad about our uncle Max,” he said, inflecting the word our with his typical vitriol. He reminded me that there had always been this weird vibe between Ace and Max. And some strange jealousy about my relationship to him that I never understood. “Ask him, Ridley, about Uncle Max and his pet projects. That’s all I have to say about this.”
“But—”
“I have to go, kid,” he said getting up. My heart fluttered when he stood. My life felt so chaotic right then, I was seized with dread that when he left my sight I might never see him again. And there was anger, too. Anger that he would leave me to face this, whatever it was, alone.
“Ace,” I said, my voice sounding desperate, childlike even to my own ears. “You can’t just leave me.”
He looked down at me and shook his head. His eyes were flat, tired, edged with—dare I even admit it—apathy.
“Ridley, I’m a ghost. I�
��m not even here right now.”
The two girls in the booth behind us had stopped their conversation, and I could sense them listening to ours. I was glad I couldn’t see them, because I couldn’t stop the tide of tears. That familiar alchemy of adoration and hatred simmered, transforming the flawed man before me into the mythic hero of my imagination. Superman, who had the power to reverse the revolution of the earth to save Lois Lane but refused; Prometheus, afraid of fire; Atlas, who dropped the heavens.
“If you’re smart, you’ll forget this thing. Just go on with your life. Move, so the person who’s doing this to you can’t find you.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. I reached into my pocket and handed him the cash I’d brought for him. He took it from me, embarrassed, and looked longingly at the door. He stood there for a second wrestling with something, but then I saw him move away.
“I love you,” I said, not looking at him.
“I know you do,” he answered. “I just don’t know why.”
I sat in the booth and watched him walk down Fourth to the corner and make a left. I watched him until I couldn’t see him anymore and then I kept looking into the night, thinking he might come back. But he didn’t. I put my head down in my arms and let my tears get soaked up in the fabric of my jacket.
“Hey.”
I looked up to see Jake had slid into the booth across the table from me. I regarded him for a second. He wore a black denim jacket over a gray T-shirt and an expression I couldn’t read. I wiped my eyes quickly, embarrassed that he would see me crying.
“Is this a coincidence?” I asked him, my voice unsteady, my eyes, I’m sure, rimmed red.
“No.”
I thought about that for a second. “You followed me.”
“I was afraid you were getting reckless, meeting your wannabe father in the middle of the night.”
When I didn’t say anything, he said, “I thought you might need some backup.”
“You followed me,” I repeated. I wasn’t sure whether to be scared, thrilled, or pissed. I was a little bit of all three, leaning heavily toward pissed.
“Who was that?” he asked, leaning back and looking out the window, as if he might catch another glimpse of Ace.
I’d never been followed before and I wasn’t sure what it said about him. I am not and never have been one of those stupid, hopeless women who think controlling behavior is sexy. In fact, just the opposite. When I sense it, it’s pretty much an off switch. So I was a little embarrassed that even though I currently had reason to suspect him of stalking me, part of me was thinking about sweeping the milkshakes off the table and doing him right there.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” I said. My words came back to me harsher than I intended.
It was suddenly quiet in the diner. I looked around, self-conscious. The after-party crowd had thinned considerably and I could hear the fluorescent lights buzzing. A couple cozied in a booth near the door. Two punks shared an order of fries, their matching orange Mohawks (so over) sagging a bit. There was an old man sipping coffee, and the only waitress, a flat-chested, mousy-haired young girl with tragic acne, pretended to read a romance novel but was really listening to our conversation.
“Right,” he answered, looking at me quickly and then down at the table. Again I tried to read his expression and couldn’t.
“I’ll go,” he said, getting to his feet. “This was a bad idea.” He walked toward the door and then came back to stand beside the table again. “I’m not a stalker, okay? I didn’t mean to freak you out. I just…already think of you as a friend; I’m not sure why. I don’t make friends easily.”
I watched him, trying to figure out if the insurgence in my stomach was from nerves, or from wanting him, or from all the crap I had just eaten.
“Is that what I am?” I asked him.
“What?” he said, showing me his palms.
“Your friend?”
He shrugged, shook his head just slightly, and then looked at me with such naked hunger that I swear I almost gasped. It was so raw, utterly without artifice, a mirror of my own heart. I put twenty-five dollars on the table and followed him out to the street.
In the cold, he took my face in his hands and kissed me softly, just touching his lips to mine. It lit me up inside, as if he had doused me in gasoline and set me on fire. I felt like a teenager, as new to my own sexual desire as I was to his. He managed to hail a cab with me attached to his face, and we fell into the back, where we groped each other like kids on prom night.
At our building, he kissed the back of my neck as I struggled to unlock the street door. He pushed me inside and pressed me against the wall. He was hungry but tender, almost reverent in the way he kissed me. He didn’t close his eyes but locked them with my own. I didn’t want to stop looking at him. I couldn’t. I’m not sure how we made it up three flights of stairs and into my apartment, but we did.
On my bed I straddled him and unbuttoned his shirt. His chest and shoulders were dominated by the tattoo of a dragon in flight, with sweeping, outspread wings, an open mouth bearing sharp teeth and a snaking forked tongue. It was a work of art, every intricate detail elaborately wrought. The dragon was angry, but it was strong and good, wise and fair. Beneath it, though, I could see scars. A four-inch-long gouge in his side, and what looked to be a bullet wound in his shoulder. He lay still as I looked at him, running my fingers along the lines of his tattoo, over the scars. He raised a hand to my face, ran it softly on my cheek, on the line of my jaw. I don’t know what he saw in my face.
“Don’t be afraid, Ridley,” he said.
I leaned in to kiss him. I was afraid, not of him, but of the powerful churning of fear and desire, of the chaos that seemed to be tearing at the edges of my once-very-orderly life. I unbuttoned my shirt and let it drop from my shoulders.
“I’m not afraid,” I said.
“This is what you want?” he said, pushing up on his elbows and looking at me. “Because I warn you, I’m not a casual guy. I’ve been alone, Ridley, for a long time. I don’t enter into things lightly.”
I felt the full weight of his words. He sat up and I wrapped my arms around him. I whispered into his ear, “Don’t be afraid, Jake.” He groaned and pulled me tighter.
“There are things you need to know about me,” he said into my hair.
“And I want you to tell me. I want to know everything. But not right now.”
The light from the hallway snuck into the bedroom and licked at the valleys on his body. His collarbone formed a strong ridge that I touched with my lips. His body, much like his tattoo, was the testament to tremendous effort and attention. Every muscle was ripped, perfectly defined, rock hard beneath the silk of his skin. He shuddered beneath the whisper of my lips. I could feel him growing hard for me, and the knowledge of his need rocketed through my bloodstream.
In the semidark, I could see only half of his face. He kept his eyes open and watched me as I pushed him back onto the bed. His jaw was square and set, his lips unsmiling. To someone who didn’t know how to look at faces, he might have seemed hard, almost angry. But I knew that it was the edges of the mouth and the corners of the eyes that told the tale. There again was the sadness I kept sensing, the powerful wanting I could feel with my body, and perhaps the thing that moved me most was the vulnerability of someone who didn’t let many people this close, who wasn’t sure he could stand the pleasure or the pain of it.
He let me explore his body with my mouth and the tips of my fingers. I wanted to walk the landscape of his physical self, take the winding path. Part of me wanted to engulf him quickly, totally, but mainly I wanted to taste every flavor of him on my tongue. He was patient, but when his low groans became more desperate, I knew his restraint wouldn’t last. As my fingers worked the buttons on his jeans, he flipped me over. He was so fast, so strong, I was wrapped in his arms and held looking up at him before I knew what hit me. For a moment I felt overpowered and flashed on how he’d followed me to the diner. I
felt a little jolt, some mingling of exhilaration and alarm.
“You’re torturing me,” he whispered, his hunger pulling his voice tight and throaty. I smiled then, wrapped my arms around him.
I was lost in a sea of his flesh, floating into his eyes, feeling his strong hands roaming my body. He was feeding on me and I let him take every inch, let him devour me. I’d never offered so much of myself in the act of lovemaking, never relinquished so much to any moment. The nightmares that newly populated my life receded like players exiting a stage, and there was nothing beyond our skin. Maybe a few days ago when I still thought I knew who I was, I would have given less ground. But finding myself suddenly free from the things that had defined me, I had no boundaries to protect. I surrendered to the pleasure created in our communion and revealed myself completely to Jake. In that place, in that moment, I was more real than I had ever been, and the person to most recently enter my life probably knew me better than anyone on earth.
ten
I never asked for Zack’s key back. I’m not sure why; I guess I felt like it would have been adding insult to injury. And ostensibly, we were still close, still good friends. But I thought that it was understood that he was no longer entitled to use it without my permission. Friday morning proved me wrong.
My heart nearly stopped as I stepped from my bedroom into the living space and my sleepy brain registered a form lounging on my couch. I felt the rush of fear to my fingertips and a shriek rise in my throat in the seconds it took me to recognize Zack. He was looking at me with an expression I’d never seen on his face before. It was worry, but it was anger, too, shaded by resentment.
“Zack,” I said quietly, raising a hand to my chest. The fear had drained, leaving annoyance in its place. “What are you doing here?”