Jessica Z

by Shawn Klomparens

  “So,” I say as I crack open the cap, “just what is happening Monday?”

  “Well, if they have the scanner moved into my studio, we’ll figure out how to use the thing, and we’ll start to take some pictures of you. It should only take a few days. Maybe a week. Are you sure you’re in?”

  “I’m sure,” I say. Josh’s new project, or at least as much as he’s described to me, is something nebulous involving maps and the human body. My human body. And apparently my body needs to be imaged in three dimensions for it to work.

  “We’ll start with your foot, or your leg, or something.”

  “Whatever,” I say.

  “You sure it’s okay with your work schedule?”

  “Work is very flexible for me now.”

  “I’m so glad you’re doing this, Jess.” He smiles. “Really. You’re perfect.”

  “Thanks?”

  “You are.”

  “Well, thank you,” I say, and I’m sure I’m blushing a little. “Now, there’s something that I want to know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How exactly am I like your sister?”

  “Jessica, you’re not—” He laughs—a small laugh, almost bitter—as he stacks my soggy plate on top of his own and puts them into the plastic grocery bag we’re using for trash. “You’re not really like her. Not at all.”

  “What made you say that, though?”

  Josh smiles and shakes his head. “I’m going to get myself in trouble no matter what I tell you,” he says. His cheeks, I’ve discovered, turn crimson when he drinks, and they’re gaining color as we speak. “Emily has kind of a simple view of things—” I open my mouth to respond, but Josh holds up his hand. “I did not, did not say you were simple. See? I told you I’d get into trouble.”

  “Just how are we alike, then? I want to know more about Emily.”

  “Well, you are certainly unlike her in that she is not a cynic.”

  “I’m a cynic?”

  “I’d say you have a highly tuned sense of cynicism, yes.”

  I smile. “I think you may have just complimented me. Was that a compliment?”

  “You are what you are,” Josh says, and I pour him some more wine. “She’s very caring. Really, really kind. Maybe to a fault.”

  “Am I like her that way?”

  Josh smirks and says nothing, and I stick my tongue out at him.

  “Okay,” I say. “More. Emily. She has kids? A husband?”

  “All of the above.” Josh gets his backpack from the camper floor, pulls his day planner from inside, and takes out a photo. “This is them,” he says as he slides the picture over the table to me. It’s a cheap studio photo; the four of them are wearing matching white polo shirts. The kids, a pair of blond boys who look younger than Mike’s sons, are adorable, and I’m surprised by how pretty and young Josh’s sister looks. The husband is blond too, with a square jaw and a toothy smile and a softening build that has former-high-school-football-player written all over it.

  “Really cute kids,” I say. “But hubby looks a little—”

  “He’s an asshole,” Josh says, and his voice goes hard. “Complete, fucking asshole.” Josh rarely swears, and hearing the sharpness in his voice is a bit of a surprise.

  “How so?”

  “He’s so…they’re so right-wing. Tim’s crazy. That’s him. He thinks I am a freak.” Josh finishes his wine in two big gulps.

  “Not a good freak.”

  “Nooo. Like, deviant. Like, should be in jail. I didn’t even tell Em about my last show.” He starts to laugh. “You want to know a good way to get the crap beaten out of you?” I don’t, really, but I suspect Josh is going to tell me anyway, and I am correct. “Suggest to your right-wing brother-in-law that you might want to take nude photos of him. That went over really well, like, almost-got-me-punched-in-the-face well.” He sighs. “I just don’t know how she got sucked into it.”

  “Is it really so bad?” I ask.

  “He’s a…they’re just…He’s such an asshole.”

  “She must see something in him.”

  “No, Jess, no.” Josh has his elbow on the table and he rubs his temples with his fingers as he talks. “I just don’t know how Emily got…how it even happened.”

  “There are relationships like that, Josh. Just because it doesn’t make any sense to you, or because you can’t see why she’s so into him—”

  He takes his hand away from his face and stares at me with reddening eyes. “He treats her like shit, Jessica. He treats her like an idiot. They’re into that whole ‘a woman’s place is in the home’ thing. Tim is the head of the household. Undisputed. He makes the paycheck, she takes care of the house and kids. Why? Why? She dropped out of college to marry him, you know? Can you believe that?”

  “Is she happy, though? Does she love him?”

  Josh rubs his face with his hand again. “How could anyone be happy in that situation? My sister? Would you be happy like that?”

  “I’m not her, Josh. I can’t say.”

  “Yes. Yes.” He rests with his face in his hand for a long time, looking deflated.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s talk about art then.” This has the intended effect, and Josh perks right up.

  “Art? That’s something I can talk about. Which art?”

  “Your art. Your prints. This new project. And my place in it.”

  “Your place. So. This scanner, the scanner we’re renting…we had to rent the really good one from the university. The one at the Academy didn’t have a high enough resolution. So this other one, this very expensive, very precise machine, it’s going to take pictures of you.”

  “Okay.”

  “But not like, pictures, exactly…?” Josh rests his chin in his palm again, and he’s gesturing through the air with his other hand. “It records your shape. It’s a three-dimensional scanner. So it’s like, you’ll be there…” His eyes are closed, and his hand, out in front of him, is still. He’s quiet for a long time, thinking, or maybe passed out.

  “I’m so tired,” he finally says. He puts his hand on the table and opens his eyes.

  “We had a long day,” I say. “You did. All that driving.” I get up and come around to help him stand. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Josh lurches to his feet, and we brush the purple stains from the wine out of our teeth and off of our tongues, zip the sleeping bags together, and turn out the overhead lamp. It isn’t long before snores and the sound of the rushing water are my last companions in the night, and I try not to shake the camper too severely as I get myself to sleep.

  14

  The scanner is not yet set up Monday morning. Gert, Josh’s Dutch and very tall grad student, is next to me in the studio, leaning over the table I’m sitting on and reading a thick manual in a three-ring binder while some men behind him uncrate what I’m assuming to be parts of this very expensive scanning machine.

  “I think we scan the foot first, Doc,” Gert says as he looks up from the pages. “Or maybe the knee. Doc? You seen the doctor, Jess?”

  My name, spoken with Gert’s severe accent, comes out sounding like Chiss.

  “He was just here,” I say.

  “We find the doctor,” he says, and rises up like a big spindly insect and makes his way around the men with the crates and out the door. If I had to guess, I’d say Gert is about nine or ten feet tall, but I might be exaggerating. He’s thin like a stick with his tight tee shirts and sloppy Euro-hair, and I sometimes wish he would wear a fanny pack—even just once—to complete my perfect mental image. But he’s always been nice to me, if maybe a little stern, and I think the way he calls Josh “Doctor” is sort of sweet.

  I need to catch up with Gretchen about the press release I wrote last week for the golf vacations people. Normally I’d step out of the studio to make the call, but since Josh is not here to lecture me about my phone, I get it from my bag and dial. It rings long enough that I think I’ll be leaving a voice mail, but then there’s a fumblin
g, windy crackle in my ear and I hear Gretchen’s voice.

  “Hey, Jessica,” she says, and I can hear her breathing and the sounds of traffic. “How was your rock expedition or whatever it was?”

  “Mission accomplished,” I say.

  “Were there artistic encounters? Encounters with the artist?”

  “That mission was also accomplished.”

  “Multiple missions? I want details. Was the camper wobbly?”

  I can hear Josh and Gert and some other person talking in the hallway. “There was some squeaking,” I say. “Details later.”

  “That means I get to see you? Today?”

  I look down at the men kneeling next to the pallets and torn-away shrink-wrap and white metal scanner parts. “It’s going to be a couple hours before they need me here, at least. Are you at HQ?”

  “I’m just going up the stairs now.”

  I look over and see Josh and Gert are standing in the studio doorway. Josh is talking to someone I can’t see in the hall.

  “Yes,” he says, gesturing at the men and parts on the floor. “Okay. I’ll call you when they have it put together.” Gert nods, arms crossed, and I hear the person in the hall say something I can’t make out. I feel Josh looking at me, probably pissed off that I’m talking on the phone in his sacrosanct little workspace.

  “I’ll be over in a bit,” I say. “See ya.” Josh raises his eyebrow, walking toward me, as I snap the phone shut and drop it back into my bag.

  “Important?” Josh says, and the tone of his voice makes me feel like I’m the one who needs to be pissed here.

  “Just my job, which you may or may not consider to be important.”

  “I wasn’t questioning the importance of your job.”

  “Right,” I say, and I reach in the bag again and almost pull out the phone just to make him angry, but I don’t. “Mmhmm. So, how long are these guys going to take? Do you really need me here right now?”

  One of the guys working on the scanner has noticed our little spat, but he’s trying to act like he doesn’t.

  “Well?” Josh says to him.

  “Maybe, probably set up by lunchtime,” the guy says.

  Josh turns back to me. “I was thinking I could do a few sketches while they finish.”

  “No,” I say, and I grab my bag and slide off the table. “I’m going to do some work.”

  “What’s the point of going if you have to turn around and come right back?”

  “I’ll see you at one,” I say, and I don’t look back as I head out into the hall.

  PitchBitch HQ—otherwise known as Gretchen’s tiny studio apartment in the Lower Haight—may possess the most cluttered workspace on earth. The place is all workspace, really; there are boxes and papers and whiteboards; maps and posters are tacked to the walls and everything is golf, golf, golf. Her desk sports both a Mac and a PC, and she jokes that, while the Mac is used exclusively for design, the PC is only used for shopping and to surf for porn. As I’ve gotten to know Gretchen better, though, I’m starting to think that she may not be joking about the porn.

  “So, I have to know,” she says, facing me across the papers in our laps as we sit cross-legged on the floor. “Was it vigorous? It always sounds like he’s so—”

  “Gretchen! Give it a rest!” I’m laughing, but still.

  “No, really, I love hearing about when he goes all crazy.”

  “He typically goes crazy. Like I tell you every time.”

  “So, it was vigorous.”

  “Jesus, Gretchen.”

  “So did anything happen, you know, while driving?” She raises her eyebrows and makes an “O” shape with her mouth.

  “Stop it. No. Are you doing this just to embarrass me?”

  “No, I just like hearing about it. So, something did happen while driving.”

  “No. Stop it! Now. Golf. Just golf.”

  “You’re so lame, Jessica,” she says, and she picks up a manila folder from the floor and starts to look through it. What I’m not telling her is that I did actually attempt going down on Josh while he was driving. It was the first day of our trip, and I accidentally knocked the car out of gear with my arm, causing a sudden roar in the truck’s engine and panic in its passengers (not to mention a complete deflation of my bravado and his erection).

  I did not attempt this again.

  Now Gretchen is handing me papers and pictures and floor plans; apparently my next high-paying task for this golf vacation empire is to write some copy for a lodging brochure. Gretchen gives me more papers.

  “There’s the…yeah, that’s the one bedroom unit,” she says, “and you’ve got the pictures of the two bedroom.” I must look confused as I look down into my lap. “You…yes, you do, they’re right there. I only have drawings of the three and four, no photos. They aren’t finished yet, or unfurnished, or something.”

  “They all look the same,” I say.

  “Yeah, I figured you could work with this. Work the angles, Jess. Hype the bedrooms. Granite counters. Upsell, upsell.”

  “What about the lonely wives and children, robbed of their menfolk by this wicked game?”

  “Ah, right,” she says. I’m handed more maps and floor plans. “There are arcades. Gyms. The day spa. Pools. Restaurants. A bar. Work it all in there. It’s not all about the wicked game.”

  “I can come up with something, I think.”

  “Knew you could. How’s it going with the bike clothes people?”

  “They’re awesome, they love me,” I say. The consulting for Mike has been going perfectly. With Gretchen’s guidance and the time-tracking and billing program she’s set me up with, I send Mike invoices, and, in return, he sends me checks. For this, I suppose I can put up with the questions about my sex life.

  “Nice.”

  “So nice. And they just sent me a box of like twenty sport tops.”

  “To keep?”

  “Yep, demos. Do you want to take some? They’re cute.”

  “Will they fit me?”

  “You can take a look. The only catch is you have to fill out a product feedback report.”

  “I can work with that.” Gretchen straightens up all the papers in her lap, lifts them a couple inches, and drops them. She does this two more times. “Should we get some lunch?”

  “Oh,” I start, and I pause as if I’m really considering it. “I need to get back to the studio for this scanner thing.”

  “Bummer.”

  Despite the fact that I’m really hungry, the truth of the matter is that I need to stop by my apartment to check messages and get some clothes, because yes, yes, I will be spending the night at Josh’s again tonight. I’ll forget about being angry, I’ll forget the nagging wish to be in my own bed for a night, and I’ll forget that I want to listen for Patrick’s footsteps above me. I’ll forget these things, and remember some others, and stay at the studio.

  There is, for better or worse, a routine established with Josh. And forgetting things has become part of the routine.

  It isn’t a long walk to my place from Gretchen’s neighborhood, and I’m relieved to see that Pat’s blinds are shut as I come down the hill. The way up the stairs feels cold, and I’m sort of sad that Danny doesn’t jump out of his door to pick me up or kiss me or even just say hello as I go past. My apartment, when I finally get the key to move the dead bolt so I can enter, seems dark and too quiet. The bed is made. There are no books on the floor next to the couch. If my plants could make me feel guilty for neglecting them, I suspect they would.

  There’s a message from Amy on my answering machine. “Where have you been, Jess?” she asks. “Call me?”

  Unlike houseplants, friends can make you feel guilty for real.

  There isn’t much I need to take, really; some underwear and a skirt will travel nicely in my now heavy-with-golf-resort-plans bag, and I think I have some apples in my fridge that are probably still edible. I’ll grab a couple for the bus ride back.

  I should call Amy. I need t
o call Katie too. I have enough time, I think—it’s only a little past noon—so I get my phone and curl up on my couch. I imagine I hear something upstairs, but it’s nothing. Katie gets the call first.

  “Jess Z.,” she says, a little eagerly and after barely a ring. “What’s up?”

  “Not much. Needed to talk to you. Needed.”

  “I needed to talk to you too. I missed you.”

  “I missed you too.”

  “How was camping?”

  “Camping was. We drove, we camped.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What happened?”

  “We drove, and camped, and got some rocks. Oh, and Josh bribed a state trooper.”

  “Rebel. He got away with it?”

  “Very easily. Very smoothly.”

  “Jess, what’s wrong? I can hear it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Is it him?”

  “I don’t know?”

  “Was there sex?”

  “Oh God. Much sex. Extraordinary sex. We pulled over, just for that. Rest stops. Very restful.” I tell her about accidentally taking the car out of gear at seventy miles per hour—complete with an imitation of the sound of the engine and the way Josh shouted “Shit!”—and my sister laughs and laughs.

  “Oh, Jessica,” she says. “That’s so perfect. I hate doing that. On the road, I mean. Not the gear thing. I mean, I wouldn’t know.”

  “I doubt I ever will again.”

  “That’s a great story, though.”

  “It wasn’t so great at the time.”

  “So what is it? Is it him? Is that why you’re upset?”

  I don’t say anything for a moment.

  “Jess?”

  “He’s very intense.”

  “You mean sexually?”

  “I mean, everything.”

  “Well, he’s an artist, right? Isn’t that part of the deal?”

  “He gets bent out of shape about weird things.”

  “Like?”

  “Like he doesn’t like me having my phone.”

  Now Katie is quiet.

  “I don’t get it?” she finally says.

  “Seriously. It started in his studio. That I guess I understand, but then like other places, you know, we’d go out, and it’s not like I’m using it blatantly, or anything—”