by Nell Zink
She wasn’t that patient. Ginger, picking her up after her violin lesson, heard the question first thing.
Ginger wasn’t sure how to answer. By now she knew the story in as much detail as Pam knew it. The doctrine that one should hate the sin and love the sinner left her nothing to say about Gwen. Flora’s age alone left her nothing to say about Gwen.
But the alternative was to either blame Joe or call it an accident. Did Joe have an accident with heroin? No, not according to Pam. He didn’t spend free time with heroin or risk his safety to enjoy heroin. The accident was Gwen. If anybody wanted to turn back the hands of time to some moment when things could have been altered, they’d do best to erase Gwen.
Ginger hesitated to speak because all her information was thirdhand. She’d seen Joe only a few times and found him nice enough, but inappropriate. She didn’t know how well Flora knew Gwen.
“It’s like this,” she said. “People die. Everybody dies sometime. It’s the cycle of being. There’s never a particular reason. They just pile up. Say if you’re old and sick, and your house catches on fire—”
“Did he kill himself?”
“No. Okay, say you’re reading a book, and it’s so good you keep right on reading while you’re crossing the street, and you get run over by a car. Who killed you? You, the guy driving the car, or the guy who wrote the book?”
“It was you, because you weren’t careful.”
“Joe wasn’t careful,” Ginger said.
Flora let that stand, and her grandmother felt a moment of immersive doubt. Disadvantageous as her impressions of Joe had been, she had never carried on a real conversation with him. Nearly everything she knew about his habits she had received straight from Flora. Only the hardest facts, such as his final day on Earth, originated with adults. She tried to mirror—nearly always—Flora’s views on everything to do with her time in New York. It felt to her like the healthy thing to do. In this manner Flora found her positions advocated and her self-assessment confirmed. But was any of it true?
WHEN THEY GOT HOME, THEY BOTH PUT IN CALLS TO PAM. BUT SHE WAS CONFERENCING at a client’s office, not answering her cell. Neither of them left a message.
Flora didn’t try her father. She had the feeling that her question would upset him.
Pam called her back during dinner, which with Ginger and Edgar always started by six. Edgar said, “No phones at the table.”
Flora said, “May I be excused?”
“You may,” Ginger said. “Come back when you’re done. We’ll wait on dessert.”
“She shouldn’t have her phone at the table,” Edgar said.
“It’s important,” Ginger said.
Flora went into the backyard and stood under the farthest walnut tree. She said, “Mom, a girl at school told me Joe killed himself.”
Pam said, “That’s not what happened. I’m sorry somebody told you that. That’s terrible.”
“First you didn’t tell me he was even dead, and then you didn’t tell me he died of drugs. You’re liars.”
“Not really,” Pam said. “You were a little kid, and there are things you can’t tell a little kid. You want to know how he died?”
“Spence said he was green—”
“I don’t give a shit about Spence.” There was a silence while Pam tried to think of the truth in suitable words. All she could muster were oversimplifications: Heroin is bad for you. Gwen is a twat. They were unsuitable.
“I’m big enough for the truth,” Flora prompted her.
“The truth,” Pam said, “is that he got really sick, like a heart attack, when he found out about the terrorists, and Gwen didn’t know how to do CPR or artificial resuscitation or anything, and he died. Then there were rumors that he killed himself, but only because he was so young.”
“Why isn’t she in jail?”
She realized with sorrow that there had been no need to bring Gwen into it. “Maybe he would have died anyway,” she said. “You know what he was like. He lived as much in one day as most people do in ten years. He had more fun than anybody else in the history of the world. Maybe he ran out?” Having overreached, she added quickly, “Never be afraid of having too much fun. Except with drugs, obviously. Never do drugs. Otherwise it’s impossible to use up your lifetime allotment of fun.”
“There’s more to life than fun,” Flora said. “What’s important is doing the right thing and helping others, like knowing first aid.”
Precipitously, Pam felt she’d been right to send her daughter to a school whose motto was “Noblesse oblige.”
LATER THAT EVENING, PAM WALKED A TOTE BAG FULL OF MUSIC UP TO THE RECORD BAR on Avenue C to donate it to the cause. Her reason to seek out a specialty shop, rather than abandon her CDs on the street, was an altruistic and probably misguided hope that they might bring joy to others. Most of them fell into the category “noise.” Some were rare, while others were considered desirable when on vinyl. For fifteen digital files stored in a bulky format, she was lucky to get fifty cents. Groups were streaming their tracks for free on MySpace. Anybody who cared could hear the difference between a CD and an MP3, but not on an MP3 player, plus nobody cared.
She stepped up to the counter, relieved to see the shop owner on duty. He wasn’t a slave driver, but he paid his staff of aficionados minimum wage, for which they were uneager to catalog stacks of worthless CDs. They wanted rare vinyl they could put aside for themselves. He claimed that the storefront had degenerated to the status of a combination billboard and warehouse and that he made his money online. He said, “Hey, Pam,” and asked her to wait a minute while he finished crouching to rake up a few sharp-edged ribbons of white pilfer-proofing plastic that had been sealing boxes of new merchandise and now littered the floor behind the counter. She set her bag down on a display case and began to unpack it onto the space next to the register, stacking the CDs into rough categories by genre.
“Pam?” a voice said.
She turned and saw someone familiar and meaningful, though she couldn’t place her at first; a chubby person, younger than herself but older than she ought to be, in a black leotard, black tights, black clodhoppers, and a green corduroy miniskirt buttoned off-center. Her bangs were held straight back with a green barrette.
“It’s me, Eloise.”
“Oh, my God,” Pam said. “Eloise!”
“I’ve been wanting to tell you for years now, how sorry I was to hear about Joe Harris.”
Pam lowered her voice and said, “Listen a second. People don’t know I knew him, and I like it that way.”
Sensing that the speech she’d been bottling up for years was likely to bug Pam rather than gratify her, Eloise said, “Oh, sorry. Want to get coffee?”
“Sure. Just let me finish up donating here.”
The store owner stood upright and said, “Joe Harris? There’s nothing special about knowing that guy. He was a social bulldozer. He came in here all the time.”
“Really?” Eloise said. “What did he buy?”
“Everything.”
“What did he like the most?”
“Ween. Sebadoh.”
“That’s interesting,” Pam said. She couldn’t recall hearing him mention those bands.
“It’s a shame he had to off himself on 9/11. He should have stayed around for all the fun.”
“Yeah, that was sad,” Pam said.
“I thought I was going to die,” Eloise said earnestly. “I couldn’t stop bawling for, like, a week.”
“Let’s get coffee,” Pam said.
“I can give you ten dollars for these,” the owner said.
“There’s a Scratch Acid EP in there,” she said. Daniel had it on vinyl, so she knew how tinny the CD sounded by comparison.
“The CD sounds like bees in a jar,” he said. “Ten dollars for everything.”
She took the cash and said to Eloise, “Coffee’s on me.”
They walked west, looking for a place with tables where they could sit down. It took a while. Pam was exc
ited. She hadn’t played the scenario through in her mind for at least three years, but she still recalled the era when she had wished first the insipid Bethany, and then the monstrous Gwen, shunted to the side in favor of the cheery, enthusiastic, Joe-like Eloise. How easy it would have been to fix them up. Just point them at each other and press “play.” What a tragedy it hadn’t happened. Instead of facing her by coincidence at a record store, Eloise would have been meeting her at a playground to watch the Joe Juniors (a boy and a girl, both named Joe, both bearers of his distinctive features and odd ways) make daisy chains. It would be the playground next to the Metropolitan Museum, because he would have put his money into real estate instead of designer drugs for the human Humboldt squid, and Eloise would stroll over from Third Avenue with the kids and their little dog Joe, while Pam walked across the park from the West Side penthouse Daniel would have bought from his earnings as the still-living Joe’s genuine manager. The fantasy went too far, but it had had a lot of time to bloom and grow without a reality check.
“I work for New York magazine now,” Eloise said. “I’m on the online style section. I’ve been working there almost four months. I cover fashion trends and stuff.”
“How’d you end up doing that?”
“I always wanted to be a reporter. I’ve been working my way through all the websites. The political and economic stuff, nobody really took me seriously. Maybe it was discrimination or whatever, but they let other women do it, so it’s probably just me. I truly admire celebrities. I’m not somebody people take seriously.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I remembered you all these years, just from meeting you twice.”
“Yeah, but I’m such a fangirl! I get good page views, but I don’t know if I’m really creative.”
“You have a lot of self-doubt.”
“I’m realistic. I’m okay at what I do, and the magazines are awesome. What are you doing these days?”
“I’m still a programmer, still in corporate consulting.”
“That is so cool! I should do a story about you. Lady programmer!”
“It would be more exciting if I’d founded a startup and cashed out. I’m still on salary. It’s kind of embarrassing. I ought to be out in Silicon Valley, riding around in a Ferrari.”
“If you can write code, you can drive a car! I can’t drive either. I’m from Brooklyn originally. I’m back there now. My grandparents died, so my parents moved downstairs and I moved into the top floor of our house. It’s so much cheaper than paying rent.”
“I didn’t mean I can’t drive,” Pam said. “I got my license before I left high school. Anyway, I’m in a band now, with Daniel. It’s just a hobby. We’ve never played out. We don’t even have a name.”
“So do you not tour because you can’t drive?”
“Me and Daniel can both drive! I’m sure you remember him. Joe’s manager?”
“I’m sorry. You said you can drive. I should get you a show! I know so many people who book shows, especially in Brooklyn.”
“That’s sweet, but we’re not so great. It’s only the two of us.”
“How do you know you’re not so great? Get some confidence! You should let me hear it! Is it online?”
“We don’t put it out in public,” Pam said. “We’re hermits.”
They passed a café with indoor seating. It looked cramped and uncomfortable, but at least it was unpretentious, so they walked back a few steps and ordered filter coffee, bodega style, from the bored and lonely cashier. Eloise got a bagel with Nutella. She insisted on paying. They selected two spindly chairs at a flimsy table.
“I was so crazy about Joe,” Eloise said.
“We all were. He was great.”
“I mean, I was in love. It was weird. I was really crazy about him.”
“I know!”
“When he killed himself, I guess because he thought it was World War Three, I felt so sorry for his girlfriend, Gwendolyn. You must know her. She’s so stunning and such a great actress. Is she okay? I mean, finding the body. I kept thinking, What if it had been me? Would it be worth finding him like that, to be able to spend five years with him? He was such an unusual guy, and so talented. I always knew he would be famous. But I’m not the kind of journalist who hangs out with successful people. I’m more a sidelines kind of person.”
Pam looked hard at Eloise, who returned her gaze with Joe-like sincerity, and the caffeine loosened her tongue. She said, “I always wished you guys would get together.”
“Seriously?”
“This is off the record, right? I mean, what I’m about to tell you, you can’t tell anybody.”
Eloise could not have looked more excited. She clearly thought Pam was about to tell her that Joe had reciprocated her crush—that he had seen her from the stage and declared that he would marry her someday, or something along those lines. She whispered, “I swear, I will never repeat one word to anybody, ever.”
Pam said, “He didn’t kill himself. That fucking bitch Gwen Charanoglu killed him.”
Eloise recoiled. “That’s not possible! She loved him. I saw all her interviews.”
“I’m telling you, I know her. You don’t. She’s a lying, manipulative sack of shit.” Pam’s voice went shrill. Telling Eloise felt like telling the press, or telling the world, and her voice acquired the edge of years of anger. “She shot him up with heroin just for something to do, because she’s a fucking junkie. And then she sat there and watched him die, and she didn’t even get a doctor. She went out to Great Neck to recuperate from the shock to her system and waited four entire days. Four days. Think about it.” She had gotten loud in spite of herself. She was glad that the cashier seemed too young and recently immigrated to have heard of Joe.
Eloise sat with round eyes and finally said, “Oh, my God, Pam, that’s horrible.”
“The worst part,” she said, lowering her voice again, “is that if she’d inherited any money from him, or life insurance or anything, I would have gone after her a long time ago. But he didn’t expect to die, so he didn’t have a will. His dad got everything, and it was so pathetic watching her go around playing the sorrowful victim. Now that she’s a D-list celeb and the second thing people think of when they think of Joe, I wish I’d done something to control the narrative. Anyway, it kills me that it could have been you.”
Eloise sat still. She wiped her eyes. They exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
WHEN PAM GOT HOME, SHE TOLD DANIEL ABOUT RUNNING INTO ELOISE AND HOW SAD IT was that Joe hadn’t hooked up with her. “She’s still so adorable,” she said. “They would have been so cute together.”
“Pam, I know you’re a cool person and everything like that,” he said, “but sometimes when you’ve been around girls, you do this girl-power thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“He thought she was fat. Remember? You told him to his face she was into him, and he said he was more into emaciated models, like you. He was into the waif look, man. It was heroin-chic days. Don’t idealize him by castrating him. He was a grown man with some pretty classic sexual preferences.”
“If he was a grown man, he was old enough to want a relationship. And with Eloise, it could have worked.”
“Let me rephrase that. He was a playboy rock star. He could get laid anywhere he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t have to negotiate a relationship. He could just haul off and fuck.”
“You know Gwen was his self-appointed procuress. Maybe living like that wasn’t his idea.”
“Yeah, right. You’re pimping Eloise. You have a crush on her. You’re going to swear off boys and run away with Eloise.”
“I am not!”
“I remember that conversation so well, how he said you were the hottest. I mean, I met you through him. I knew you were more important to each other than I was to either of you. He devoted himself to you, when you let him, like with Flora. But he knew better than to make a move.”
“I loved him. I always sort of believed that if his i
nabilities . . . I don’t know.”
“You’re talking crazy talk.” Daniel’s expression was grave, without irony. “Eloise is your proxy, qualified to be with Joe in a way you’re not, because she’s kind of vaguely dimwitted.”
“Of course I wished sometimes we could have been closer. Not intimate. I don’t know. Just to have a real conversation. I felt something very strong for him, maternal feelings, like with Flora—except, I don’t know. I couldn’t really talk to him. Not about real stuff.”
“Just because it didn’t work doesn’t mean it wasn’t sexual. Hot babes tend to forget that. You’re constantly bombarded with sexual offers, and you think love is this thing where your job is to say yes or no. Like, fish or cut bait, do I want this guy or not. Well, love is not like that. Sometimes—like for me before I met you—you cast out your lure and you wait and wait and wait, like Eloise did, loving Joe from afar. Except she baited her hook, and his answer was ‘No fat chicks!’ So deal with it.”
“I think I love him less now,” she said. She stole into his arms. “I liked him better as my latent lesbian proxy who was going to fall for Eloise the minute we got them alone together.”
“I love you because you’re skinny,” he said. He stroked her flat stomach.
WEEKS LATER, HAVING PUT ELOISE OUT OF HER MIND, SHE GOT AN E-MAIL INVITING them both to contribute a song to a Joe Harris tribute CD that was being put out by a culture website Eloise had founded after she got fired from New York. Pam didn’t answer the e-mail or tell Daniel about it. It seemed too ironic to her to cover Joe’s vacuous pop songs as a tribute, when he was known for his cover of “Bird in God’s Garden.”
Two weeks later, she got another e-mail, inviting their band to play a show at a space in Bedford-Stuyvesant. They would sound-check at six P.M. and go on around nine as the warm-up act for a fashion show. The space was a garage, until recently home to a tow-truck service, and currently a fashion designer’s studio. It was basically a rent party for the fashion designer. They could borrow amps from the band after them. They would need a name, unless they wanted to be “Pam and Daniel.”