“Can I use the—”
“Oh, yeah.” Adam points to the hallway. “The bathroom is right there.”
The bathroom door is open. To the left there’s a kitchen, enough street light coming through the window that I can see the stove and a small table. But on the other side of the bathroom, there’s a door and it’s closed. I can’t tell if it’s the bedroom or a closet and I start to worry that the futon is where Adam sleeps. I close myself in the bathroom, turn the lock until it latches, and try to run through everything Adam said to me about staying at his place. I thought he talked about making up the futon like it was something extra he would do. But I’ve never been in an apartment like this before. Maybe I don’t understand how he lives. Maybe he doesn’t bother folding it down for just one person.
After I flush, I wash my hands the best I can around the bandage and pull my fingerless gloves back on. Margo would never have let me work in knit gloves. They’re already pilling and full of crumbs and coffee dust that won’t shake out all the way. My fingers feel stiff. I know I should wash the cut and change the bandage, but I left all that stuff in the car.
“Okay, do me a favor,” Adam says when I get back from the bathroom. He’s pulling the futon away from the wall. “Grab over there.”
I don’t know how to say I’m leaving.
He pushes the top of the futon forward and picks up the edge of the bench at the same time. My arms are shorter and my hand hurts, but I reach as far as I possibly can to make it work, because he asked me to. The frame unlatches and the futon flattens. I feel the stretch in my muscles even after I’ve let go.
Adam climbs on the futon and opens a cupboard under the bookshelves behind it, pulling out sheets and a blanket and three pillows. The blanket is fluffy and the sheets are crisp. Three pillows. But he wanted my help with the futon, so it’s probably not something he does every night.
I stare at my boots by the door, think through the motions it will take to slip my feet in and run.
“You know, you can take your gloves off,” Adam says, and I go so quickly from being worried about leaving to worrying that he’s noticed how gross my gloves are—that he might not want me in his bed, on his clean sheets.
I stare at the pillows and think about the dark outside. I don’t want to be anywhere. The blanket looks warm. “I cut my hand,” I say, like it’s some kind of apology. “At the campground. Firewood.”
Adam climbs off the futon. “Give it,” he says, curling his fingers at me.
I place my hand in his.
He peels my glove away. Winces when he sees dried blood on the bandage, but he unwraps it without hesitation. Leads me to the bathroom, runs water in the sink until it’s warm and guides my hand into the stream. “Just let it rinse for a sec,” he says, raising his eyebrows, eyes sad, like he’s sorry I’m hurt.
My cut is sort of puffy and the water stings, but when I flex my fingers, I feel like the ice I’ve been carrying in my bones starts to melt.
Adam opens the medicine cabinet, lines up iodine and bandages and medical tape along the side of the sink. He smells like soap and night air and a little bit like Matty, like they use the same shampoo, or maybe that’s just what men smell like when you get close enough.
He pats my hand dry with a cotton ball, squirts iodine over the cut, making yellow-brown splash marks in the sink. He has a small hoop in his left ear. I’m not sure how I missed it before. It’s silver, twisted like a rope, tarnished in a way that looks cool.
“Does it hurt?” he asks.
“It’s fine.” My voice sounds so small. I try to keep my hands steady, but my knees start shaking, like the movement has to go somewhere.
Adam pats my hand dry again with a new cotton ball, then wraps it with careful turns of the bandage roll and just the right amount of tape. “Good as new.”
All the blood in my body rushes to my cheeks. Our eyes meet and there’s this funny flash in my brain. He has very nice green eyes.
He turns away to rinse out the sink.
The floor is tiled with all these tiny tiles. Black and white octagons, and the grout between them is grey, but I don’t think it’s mold or dirt. I think it’s supposed to be that color, since everything else is so clean. Being here is better than another cold night. Maybe all of this is fine even if that closed door is a closet.
“Thank you,” I say.
Adam puts the iodine in the medicine cabinet. “You hungry?” he asks. Looks over at me. Our eyes meet again.
I touch his cheek with my good hand, press my lips to his and feel the heat of him all the way to my toes.
He opens his mouth. I open mine, inch my tongue toward his, but he’s pulling away.
“No. Don’t—” He takes a step back like he thinks I’ll kiss him again if he doesn’t make extra space between us. “That’s not—” He shakes his head.
My throat cramps so hard I can barely breathe. I push past him, out the bathroom door to the living room to grab my boots.
“Hey,” Adam calls, following. “Don’t go. You don’t have to—that’s not…” He stares at me, eyes wide. “Just wait. Wait, okay?”
He goes into the kitchen. I stand by the door, holding my boots. I don’t know what I’m waiting for and the curiosity keeps me from leaving even though I’m burning all over from how embarrassed I am.
Adam comes back with his calzone split onto two plates. “Will you stay?”
I shake my head. Step into a boot. I don’t know what I thought he’d get from the kitchen that would make this okay. I can’t even look at his face. I slip my other foot in its boot, don’t bother tying laces.
“Please?” he says. “I’m going to go in my room to eat and sleep and you can have this whole place to yourself.”
He pushes a plate at me and even though the cheese is cold and congealed now, it smells amazing. I am too hungry to refuse.
He says good night and that I can come get him if I need anything, like it’s settled that I’ll stay and eat and sleep on that futon by myself. Then he goes into his bedroom and shuts the door.
I eat fast, standing away from the futon so I won’t spill on anything but myself. Then I kick my boots off but leave all my clothes on. I don’t make the bed, just throw down the sheet and lie on top of it. Pull the blanket over me and try to take up as little space as I can, like sleeping on half the futon will be half the burden. I thought I understood and I don’t and I have that math class feeling in my chest. The tightness pulls in on me and my insides might pop like a balloon in a vise. In my head, I kiss him over and over. His lips are chapped, but mostly soft. That horrified look on his face. My thoughts are too bright and loud for me to fall asleep. But I’m warm. At least I am warm, and my hand feels a little bit better.
* * *
When the sky is just beginning to turn blue, I fold the blankets and sheets, stack the pillows next to them. I don’t think I can push the futon back into a couch myself. I worry it will make noise if I try, so I leave it. Tiptoe into the kitchen to place my plate in the sink, then I sneak out the door, carrying my boots down the stairs so my footsteps won’t make noise.
I drive to The Commons, park one street over from yesterday. Maybe today I’ll get up the nerve to ask Carly about her couch. Today is also the day we get paid and divvy up the tip jar and I don’t know how much money it will be, but maybe it’s enough. Maybe one of those Xeroxed posters with the fringed edge will have a phone number I can call, a room I can rent for cheap. Or maybe I’ll buy a map and drive away to find someplace new, where I haven’t humiliated myself yet.
I sit on a bench across from Decadence and wait for it to open. The clouds break apart and a beam of sun shines through. I close my eyes and pretend I can absorb the light like a sunflower.
When I open my eyes again, Adam is walking toward me. I want to get up and walk away, but he sees me see him, so there’s no exit that isn’t awkward.
“Hey,” he calls, with a bend in his voice like he’s worried. “You didn’t
have to leave. I was going to make pancakes.”
In the sunlight, I can see the freckles on his nose. The chapped skin on his lips that I felt with my own. He looks kind. Normal. And I feel terrible for all the things I thought he could be.
I pick at a bubble of paint on the bench. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Did you sleep okay?” he asks, like he actually wants the answer. I don’t think anyone in my entire life has ever been so wound up about whether I slept through the night.
“Yeah.” When my answer makes him smile, I smile without even meaning to, like I’m a mirror.
“What happened—it’s not—that’s not why I invited you—”
“It’s fine,” I say, replaying the part from last night when he stepped away because he didn’t trust me to stop kissing him. I watch a gull swoop in to grab an old french fry from the ground. “It’s fine.”
“I was homeless once. And no one noticed me. So I’m trying… I’m trying to notice you. But maybe I’m not…” He takes a deep breath. “Maybe I’m not doing it right.”
My nose stings. I hate that he called me homeless, like I’m already stuck this way. I’m tipping on the edge of tears and I wish Carly would come and open the door to Decadence so I’d have a reason to walk away.
“How old are you?” Adam asks.
“Nineteen.” I don’t let it snag my voice, so it comes out like truth. Eighteen is too convenient and I know I can’t pass for twenty-one. I look young for sixteen when I don’t try hard enough.
Adam studies my face like he’s testing this number—stretching to see if it breaks. “You working all day?”
“Till six.”
He reaches in his pocket, pulls out a key. “In case you want to shower on your lunch break, okay? You can have the place to yourself.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I wasn’t trying—” He looks like he’s about to cry, “I wasn’t trying to use you, okay? I wish someone had helped me. That’s all it is.” His eyes are so green.
I take the key from him. Loop the ring around my finger, squeeze it tight in my palm.
“There’s towels in the linen closet. Poke around as much as you want. Whatever you need, okay?” Adam pats my shoulder, quick and awkward. “I’ll stop by on my way home, and we’ll—we’ll see, if you want to stay again, okay?”
I nod. I am not going to fall apart over this. I won’t let him hear my voice break. But when he walks away, the words grow in my chest. “Thank you,” I yell.
He looks back and waves. His reusable coffee cup is hooked on his messenger bag. I wonder where he’s getting his coffee this morning.
— Chapter 15 —
It’s hard to pay attention at work knowing there’s a hot shower waiting for me at lunch. It’s not even just about the shower. I feel like it’s been so long since I was completely alone. Even at the campground there was always the possibility of people. I don’t know exactly what it is I want to do that’s so different from what I’d do if someone could see me, it’s just the idea that I can breathe all the way out, that maybe for a moment I don’t have to be ready for someone else to appear.
I’m so distracted I need to ask most of our customers for their orders twice. I accidentally shortchange one of the regulars and have to run outside to give him the missing five when I realize. Luckily Carly is at class and Bodie does stuff like this all the time, so he doesn’t see my mistakes as mistakes. But I hate to think of the Bodie catastrophes I’m not catching while I’m causing my own.
* * *
At lunch, I ask Bodie to make my sandwich to go. I walk up the hill to Adam’s house because walking to my car would take almost as long.
The downstairs door is open. I feel weird going right on in, worried someone will stop me, but no one’s around. When I climb the stairs, it smells like someone’s baking frozen pizza on the second floor.
As soon as I get inside Adam’s apartment, I lock the door behind me, kick off my boots, and slide around in my socks to look at things. The futon is back to being a couch, but the blankets and sheets and pillows are still stacked at the end, like maybe he’s planning for me to sleep here again.
He has two black canvas chairs like movie directors have. The coasters on the footlocker are slices of a skinny birch tree. Behind the futon, the bookshelf built into the wall is filled with books that are actually his, not from the library. I stand on the futon so I can see them. A red cloth-covered dictionary with gold letters on the binding. Matching rust-colored books called Encyclopedia of Architecture. A yellow one about how the pyramids in Egypt were built. A bunch of paperback mysteries. Then there’s all the CDs. Simon & Garfunkel, Eric Clapton, and Jane’s Addiction. Miles Davis and Chet Baker. David Bowie and a bunch of movie soundtracks. He likes U2, but I can’t hold it against him, because he has three Bob Dylans and they’re good ones. Highway 61 Revisited, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and Blood on the Tracks, which is my favorite. When we lived over the Wash ’n Fold, my dad had that one on 8-track and I listened to it with my cheek pressed against the speaker so I could feel the harmonica in my teeth.
I haven’t heard that album since my dad dropped the 8-track player down the stairs while we were moving out. So many of those songs never get played on the radio and I miss the way they feel in my brain. Adam’s stereo is next to his desk, and I don’t think he’d mind. I don’t think he’d mind at all, so I take the CD from the bookshelf. The disc in the player is a band called Red House Painters. I swap in Dylan, lie on my back on the floor and listen to If You See Her, Say Hello, because that song is the one I missed the most. Adam’s rug is rough and the fibers are scratchy in a way that feels good on my back. Listening to Bob Dylan’s voice swell through the lyrics is like drinking cool water when your mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton.
I sing along. Super quiet, in case Adam’s neighbors can hear, but my voice still echoes. I can’t sing it straight. My voice is too low to sing it up high and too high to sing it where Dylan does, so I sing around him, swooping between his notes the way I always used to, my own song for his song. I miss my guitar. I never even learned how to play this one and I wish I could. Tears slide from the sides of my eyes, dripping in my hair. I want to keep listening, all the way through Shelter from the Storm to Buckets of Rain, but the longer I lie here, the harder it will be to move. I put Red House Painters back in the CD player and Bob Dylan back on the shelf.
There’s a photo in a frame on the bookcase. Adam and a group of guys, and they look young, like college young. They’re holding beers and smiling, leaning against each other. Adam looks happy, but not as much as the other guys, and it makes me like him more. I wonder if it was taken before or after he was homeless. I wonder if there’s an after for me. If I have a chance to have my own place with high ceilings and shelves full of music someday.
I don’t have to poke in the linen closet, because Adam left a towel and washcloth for me on the sink. I am alone, alone, alone and the water is hot. His soap smells like peppermint and makes my skin tingle and when I’m done, I feel like a dirty window that’s been washed until it squeaks. He left the bandages out for me too. I can’t find a hair dryer, so I get dressed and eat my sandwich in the living room with one of the director’s chairs pulled up to the wall so I can hang my hair over the radiator. I want to listen to more of Blood on the Tracks, but I worry I might fall apart. So I play Red House Painters and I like it. The lead singer’s voice sounds echoey and slow and it matches the sadness that runs under Adam’s smile in that picture.
When I’m done eating, I have to run the whole way back to Decadence to make it in time, but I am warm and clean and fed and happy.
— Chapter 16 —
Adam comes into Decadence at a quarter to six. I’m standing on a chair, trying to unscrew the side panel of the espresso machine, because Bodie somehow dropped a penny in the seam and then conveniently disappeared into the kitchen. Kelsye, the girl whose shift is after mine, is in early, so she tak
es Adam’s order. I give him a quick wave, but I’m so scared of losing the screws or dropping the panel that I can’t manage a good look to see if he’s happy to see me. By the time I get the penny and put everything together again, Adam is sitting at his usual table by the window, but his back is to me.
I go into the kitchen to sign out. Bodie is hunched over the stove, spooning something into a bowl. “Here,” I say, throwing the penny at him when he turns. He catches it. Slips it in his pocket like this whole thing was about him getting his money back.
“Here,” he says, and hands me a soup bowl full of mac and cheese, toasted bread crumbs sprinkled across the top. “Something I’m trying out.”
“Smells good,” I say, and he beams.
“The secret is mustard.”
I wince.
He says, “Trust me.”
“Okay,” I say.
“If you like it, tell Carly?” Bodie grinds pepper over my bowl. “I want her to make it a special.”
“Sure,” I say, and the way he looks in my eyes makes me think we could be having a moment. But then he says, “Is Kelsye here?” and the turn in his voice is so obvious.
“She’s busy,” I tell him, and take my mac and cheese out front so I don’t have to talk about Kelsye anymore.
Adam is reading, newspaper folded to the exact column so he can hold it with one hand and eat his sandwich with the other. He doesn’t look up when I get closer.
I felt so sure about the plan. I didn’t ask Carly or Bodie. I didn’t look for slips of paper on the bulletin board.
“Can I sit here?” I ask, and wonder if he can hear my heartbeat.
Adam looks up, staring for a minute before he grins. “Of course.”
I pull his key from the waistband of my skirt and slip it across the table. “Thank you,” I say, and I want to say more, but I don’t have the right words.
“Everything work okay for you?” Adam asks. I nod and he smiles. I wait for him to offer for me to stay again, but he just says, “Good!”
The People We Keep Page 11