Jessica Z

by Shawn Klomparens

  “No, it’s fine. And yeah, we are. I think?”

  “What’s it like? What’s he like?”

  “It’s, well, it’s interesting.”

  “I bet. Dr. Hadden is kind of, he’s, hmm…”

  “Yeah, he is,” I say, and we laugh.

  “I’m just asking because Gert, he and the doctor, it’s a—”

  “How does Gert feel about him?”

  “Don’t ever tell him I said this. Gert, I mean. Or Dr. Hadden, either, I guess, but I think Gert is really intimidated by him.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Gert thinks he’s crazy. But he also thinks he’s a genius.”

  “I would agree. On both counts.”

  “Gertie is talking about maybe going to the U.K. to work with him more. Dr. Hadden asked him if he’d be interested.” We’ve stopped in front of a bank of vending machines, and Angie digs through a little pocketbook looking for change.

  “What do you think about that? Would you go?”

  “Oh, yeah, I would. London is great too. It’s nice to see Gert get all excited about something. But Dr. Hadden is so intense.” She plugs her coins into one of the machines and gets a bottle of water.

  “He is,” I say.

  “Hey, I should get back. It was so nice meeting you. And thanks for coming. I know it made Gertie really happy.”

  “I’m glad,” I say. “Do you think it would make him mad if I called him ‘Gertie’ back in the studio?”

  “You could call him that, and he’d probably laugh. If the doctor called him that, he’d search for hidden meaning.”

  I guess I’m not surprised to find I’m not the only one who looks for hidden meaning in Josh’s actions.

  19

  Over the next few weeks, the studio changes from looking like a radiology lab to a computer lab to something defying description; giant flat-screen monitors stand around the perimeter and the interior is now filled with slabs of rock and sheets of paper. An old-fashioned printing press stands in the very center of the room. Josh, more often than not, wears a heavy rubberized apron and surgical gloves, and Gert, also aproned, has a ridiculous plastic bag held over his new cast with a rubber band.

  The project becomes a twenty-four-hour operation. Shades stay down, almost always, on the big sunny windows, and a fold-up cot appears in the corner. Gert’s backpack is usually stashed beneath it.

  Textbooks with titles like Elements of Cartography and Mastering the UNIX Command Line, Volume III sit on the computer desks. The monitors are enormous, like miniature movie screens, and although sometimes I see the ghostly white scans of my body across them it’s more often a bouncing ball screen saver. Jugs and buckets of chemicals and inks sit around the tables and fill the studio with a new, caustic smell. It’s vaguely acrid, almost like vinegar; the scent creeps up in my nose and lingers in the top of my sinus and it invades my clothes and my bag and I always worry that I stink like a darkroom after I leave.

  Josh, when I visit, has perpetual stubble and dark rings below his eyes. Some days he has ink smeared on his cheek or neck or forehead. When he finally does notice me he seems surprised; he blinks and gives a little shake of his head, as if the real me has sprung up from the 3D me he sees all day on his monitors and shouted “Boo!”

  “Would you turn around and lift up your shirt?” he asks one day when I come through the door. “I need to see your lower back.” This is how he greets me.

  I pull my shirt above the waistband of my skirt and turn around for him, and I look over my shoulder and see him cocking his head as he stares at the small of my back. He says okay, okay, then he nods and pulls off one of his gloves to chew the nail of his ring finger before going back to one of the tables to pick up a pad of paper. He makes a note about something, or maybe a sketch. Gert works on, silently, while this happens. He’s always working.

  I usually ask if I can bring them anything when I come. Can I get you something to eat? Something to drink? They wave me off. To be honest, I don’t feel so welcome in the studio anymore. I haven’t spent the night since…well, I honestly don’t remember.

  I think I might be taking this a little personally.

  Professionally, though, the time away has been a good thing. Cippoletti and the golf resort are both going like crazy. I write and I write—magazine ads, brochures, and copy for radio spots—and somehow I manage to keep Mike, the Italians, and Gretchen all happy. Thankfully, Gretchen is the only one of us who deals directly with our masters in golf land.

  My mother calls too, during this time, almost daily. Plans for my sister’s going-away-to-the-South-Pacific party have become concrete; a barbecue is set for one week from Saturday with family and friends, and two days after that we’re going to drive out on the peninsula to eat at a seafood restaurant and stay at a bed-and-breakfast for our special mother-sister-sister time. My dates to travel up there have been set, but my mom—who has some special voodoo method for finding cheap airfares—is waiting until the last minute to buy my tickets.

  “It’s almost time,” she says during one afternoon call. I’m sitting in my bay window and watching the street as we talk. “It’s very close.”

  “They’re so cheap right now, Mom, why not just go ahead and get them?”

  “This fare will be ten to fifteen dollars less in two days. I’ll buy them at the right time, you don’t need to worry.”

  In her frugal nature, I’m beginning to understand what drew my parents together so long ago.

  “I appreciate that you’re paying for these, really, but I’m happy to get it myself, Mom.” I seriously am; salary-wise, I’m doing better right now than I ever have in my adult working life.

  “No, no, Jessica. This is my special treat for you girls. For me too.”

  “You will let me get the B and B. I’m not joking.”

  “Oh, Jessica, it’s enough trouble that you’re coming up.”

  “I’m paying, whether you like it or not.”

  “We can talk about it.”

  We get off the phone, and I go to the computer to try to write some more. Katie has left me an instant message while I was on the phone that says, simply: “SCAN MY ASS.”

  I can’t even think of a response for this, so I just type: “you win, K., today and for always. go easy on caps lock.” I get her away message when I send it, though; she must be off teaching now or something important like that. So I write. It’s a piece about the Cippoletti tops; a serious piece with no mention of bodily fluids. As I work, there’s a knock at my door, and I jump because I think for an instant it’s going to be Patrick.

  “Jess, are you there?” It’s Danny’s voice. I open the door and Danny comes in and holds me in a long hug.

  “Where have you been, Jess? I’ve missed you.”

  “I missed you too, Danny. I’ve been turned into a work of art, I guess.”

  “You’ve always been a work of art. A piece of work, at least.”

  “Ha.”

  “I was worried my big brother services would no longer be needed.”

  “You’re always my big brother, Danny. Forever and ever.”

  “I know it. Is your computer working? I can’t get online.”

  I point to my desk with a sweeping move of my arm. “My workstation is yours.”

  Danny sits and brings up his e-mail. “You plug straight in, but I’m using wireless. It always dies on me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to reboot up in Pat’s place. All those wires.”

  “I don’t know anything about it. But he’ll be home in an hour.”

  “No, he won’t. He’s in Singapore right now.”

  This is news. “For real?”

  “They’re doing a demo of their project. Asian launch party. I think he’s in Tokyo tomorrow, then he’s back Tuesday.”

  “I didn’t even know.”

  “Now you do.”

  “How did the launch go here?”

  “You can ask him yourself when he gets back. I’m not going to be your
proxy, Jessica. That’s stupid.”

  This gets me a little huffy. I cross my arms and glare at Danny, which is a pointless act because, despite all my angry nose breathing, he refuses to turn around and look at me, and even if he did I doubt he would care. So I go to the kitchen and adopt a new strategy.

  “It’s five o’clock,” I say. “Wine time. Do you want a glass?”

  “Even if you make me drunk,” he calls back, “I’m not talking about Pat.”

  “Damn you, Danny! You’re impossible!”

  “Sure,” he says. “I’ll have a glass.”

  An hour after Danny has left, I’m tipsy and nursing my goblet with Amy’s book in my lap. I’m reading without really reading, sitting in sweatpants just looking at words with my hand in my shirt on my stomach; I’m tired and a little drunk and thinking maybe, maybe, I’m going to go to bed early tonight.

  There’s a knock at my door and the first thing I think is how I’m happy my computer is still on so Danny can quickly check his e-mail and get the hell out of here. The knock comes again, softly, and I move my wineglass so I won’t kick it over and put my book on the floor next to it.

  “Hold on a second,” I say, and walk across the space of my living room. “Hold on.”

  Josh is at my door; he looks jangly and his eyes seem ready to pop out of his head.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s done, Jess. We finished.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “The prints are…we got the last one done an hour ago.” He steps into my place and holds me by the shoulders.

  “How did you get into the building?”

  “You didn’t see the note.”

  “The note, what?”

  “You’ll see the note. Who’s your neighbor downstairs?”

  “Danny?”

  “With the dark hair. From the party.” He kisses me, and his beard is rough on my chin. “It’s done. The prints are done.”

  “That’s great, Josh. Thank you for telling me. I’m exhausted, though. I was getting ready for bed.” He’s pushing me—gently—into the apartment, and I’m letting myself be nudged back.

  “They look…it’s incredible.”

  “Maybe I can see them tomorrow?”

  “No, no, the exhibit. At the Academy. Week from Thursday. That’s when you can see them.” We’re at my couch; Josh pushes me back so I’m sitting down and he kneels on the floor in front of me. I think I hear my wineglass tip over.

  “I am really, really tired, Josh.”

  He takes my sweats by the waistband with both hands and pulls them down. I cringe as I lift my hips a bit to facilitate this action, but he doesn’t see it.

  “Could we maybe do this tomorrow?”

  He’s kissing my stomach.

  “Damn it, Josh.”

  Now I’m grabbing a pillow. He goes to work; I’m too self-conscious to peek and see his face down there, and the lamp is too far for me to reach and turn off. At least the blinds are closed.

  When it’s done, he doesn’t need to ask “Did you?” It’s fairly obvious, at least to me, that I did.

  Josh stands up and stretches his neck. He stares at me sitting there, and I’m coming back to earth and wondering how I can get my sweats and do I need to wipe up spilled wine on my floor?

  “Come by the studio tomorrow,” he says.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need to help Gert finish cleaning things up.”

  “You’re really leaving?”

  “It’s a mess.”

  “Can I take care of you? Just stay for a little bit.”

  “I need to get back.” He leans down and his kiss tastes like me. He kisses me a second time, and then his face gets that look of just remembering something.

  “Can I use your phone? Fast.”

  “You don’t need to ask.”

  He dials the phone and stands facing my bookshelf with his fingers pressed to his ear. I get my underwear and sweats back on, and yes, there is a wine mess, so I go to the kitchen to get some paper towels.

  “Hey, Emmy, hey, it’s Josh, maybe you guys are out or in bed or something, I wanted to call and say, it’s done, Emily, it’s done! I want you to see it, I’m going to try to get some pictures from the opening, God I wish you could be there. And, um, hey, you know I talked to Mom, please, please call her, she’s got, she wants to help, Emily, she’s there for you, she and Dad have room—” Josh suddenly stands up straight and looks at the phone. I’m on my knees wiping up the spill that has migrated under my couch.

  “I think it hung up on me.” I stand up, paper towels in hand, and he gives me another kiss.

  “You can stay, really.”

  “I’m going back. Come see me at the studio.”

  He leaves, and I go to the bathroom and brush my teeth and turn out the lights and climb into bed. Tonight, falling asleep is hard.

  I’m craving good coffee—a latte or some other overpriced hot drink—in the morning, so I dress myself and have a glass of water and a multivitamin and head down the stairs to brave the hipsters at Tommie’s Coffee Shop. Danny, the little geek, is getting a newspaper from his box out front.

  “Late night visitor?” He rolls up the paper and swats it into his hand a few times.

  “Shut up,” I say. “Give me a little warning next time before you provide access to any late-night visitors in the future, will you?”

  “Provide access, what?”

  “Didn’t you let Josh in?”

  “I didn’t let anyone in. I heard someone run up the stairs, and I heard you talking.”

  “Stop it, you’re messing with me.”

  “I’m not. Come on, Jess, I wouldn’t just let someone in. It was Josh?”

  “You really aren’t saying this just to freak me out?”

  Danny shakes his head, and I am, seriously, freaked out.

  I try to call the studio on the way to the coffee shop, it rings and rings, but no answer. I call the Academy back and ask for Hoffman’s extension this time, and he picks up on the second ring.

  “Nah, he’s not here,” Hoffman says. “He took my car about forty minutes ago.”

  It’s nice enough to sit outside at Tommie’s, so I do; this also gets me away from the dreadlocked guy who stared at me the whole time I waited for my latte at the counter. I stare at my phone, as if somehow just looking at it will guide me to getting in touch with Josh so I can ask him what the hell is going on. And as I look, the display lights up and it starts to vibrate in my hand. The number on the display is from the 617 area code; I know this is Boston, but the number isn’t Katie’s.

  “Hello?”

  “Jess Z.” It is Katie. “What’s up?”

  “I thought you could keep your number?”

  “You can, if you want tall doctors to call you every twenty effing minutes.”

  “You ended it?”

  “It’s an ongoing process.”

  “Congratulations?”

  “Thank you, I think. I might not have initiated the breakup if I had known it would be this hard. I could have just ignored him on the boat. But I wanted to do it like a big girl. What’s up?”

  I tell her about Josh coming over, and everything that happened. I tell her about Danny not letting him in.

  “What the hell?” Katie says. “That’s creepy.”

  “I know.”

  “I think you need to end it too.”

  “I know. Thank you. I needed to hear you say it before I let myself think it.”

  “It’s just a weird picture you’ve painted. The whole time. So how do you do it?”

  “Well, there’s a show next week, I guess, with the stuff he made from my scans. I haven’t even seen the prints yet. Do I do it before that?”

  “A gallery show?”

  “I think so.”

  “Featuring your bum?”

  “Stop it, I’m trying to be—”

  “Wait until after the show. Don’t have sex with him again
. See the prints. Don’t lose your will.”

  “That’s what I should do?”

  “That’s what you should do.”

  I thank Katie and we say good-bye, and I program her new number into my phone.

  I have my second opinion. And I know what I will do.

  There is serious fog on the night of the opening. Gert has called to make sure I’m coming; yes, he says, it’s a dress-up kind of thing, and yes, there will be an open bar. The news about the bar pleases me. I can fortify my will for free.

  Since his visit, I haven’t seen or talked to Josh once. I haven’t gone to the studio, and he hasn’t come to my apartment. I’d like to think that he suspects something is up, that something is going to happen, that I’m going to stand up and say this can’t continue. I’d like to think that, but I might just be imagining it.

  I have gotten back into the habit, over the past week, of using the chain and the dead bolt on my door. From behind this wall of paranoia I’ve made for myself, I often hear Patrick; going up, coming down. He yells things to Danny. Danny yells things back. They’ve been hanging out a lot lately, without me. As I put on my black dress for the opening, they’re yelling things again.

  “You ready yet?” Danny shouts. “We have twenty minutes before they start.”

  “Almost, almost! Jesus, Danny, those guys never start playing on time.”

  I wait for them to leave, and with my low-heeled shoes and my bag and a funky knit shawl I’m almost out my door, but then I stop and go to my shelf and get my road atlas. I flip through it, not really looking at anything in particular, wondering if I should bring it along. But instead, I just slide it back into its place among my books. Then I head out the door and off to the bus stop. The fog feels kind of lovely, and in a strange way I feel like the mist and the dark are bolstering my courage for what I’m planning to say to Josh.

  Maybe I’m building it up to be a bigger deal than it is. Maybe he’ll shrug. Maybe this was nothing. Maybe I was just part of the project, a prop, and will be treated as such.

  Or maybe, as I’m kind of secretly hoping as I sit here in this humming bus, he’ll flip out and throw a tantrum.

  The gallery is close to the Academy, just off campus, and as I walk up to it I see people inside and a giant sign, suspended from the ceiling, that says: “JOSHUA HADDEN: The Physical Atlas.” Below the big sign is a smaller one, a detail of what looks like a greenish hiker’s topographic map; there are lines and marked elevations and named roads, and as I step through the door, staring up, looking and looking more, I suddenly realize: