Sliding Past Vertical (5 page)

Chapter
9

Dee Dee’s parting salvo, before
leaving for the hospital, was to tell Sarah she would stand a better chance of
getting a job if she did something with her hair. And that she could throw a pillowcase
over Petie’s cage if he got too chirpy.

Sarah wished it were as easy to
silence Dee Dee.

She leaned back against the couch
and closed her eyes. The phone sat in her lap, her hand resting on the
receiver. Around her lay a scatter of several newspapers’ “help wanted”
sections, various ads circled in red pen. Cicadas droned. Cars slid down her
narrow street. The kitchen clock had never been so loud. Their blinds did
nothing to hold back the shimmering bloat of August. It was nine thirty and
already the backs of her knees were damp.

She missed Jay’s apartment, with
its central air and lack of roommates. The least he could have done in return
for holding his stuff would be to invite her to sleep over these past few
suffocating nights. What were the odds of someone breaking in a third time?

He was probably practicing and
wouldn’t get the phone, but she left a message reminding him he’d left
something at her place. Then circled two more ads, pecked out a cover letter on
Dee Dee’s typewriter, and put a résumé in an envelope.

He didn’t call back.

She picked up one of the papers and
reread the article about the fire. Not yesterday’s
Globe
, where the evidence had already surfaced, and a lurid picture
showed Jimmy being led away in handcuffs. But the Brookline paper, a weekly,
where the cause of the blaze had not yet been determined. Where a Copy King
employee, identified by name, admitted in a police statement to leaving a
certain old and faulty piece of equipment plugged in because she was in a hurry
to return a videotape and meet her boyfriend.

Moron
,
Sarah thought.

Jimmy, too.

The parakeet stirred, chirped a few
times, realized no one gave a damn, and stopped.

Needing something to do, she
decided to evaluate her interview clothes. She didn’t remember the last time
she’d worn her one good suit and one pair of sensible, business-like shoes, and
she wanted to make sure they were still in decent shape, on the off chance
someone might actually want to interview her.

But knowing what else was in her
closet stopped her cold.

At first, she tried hiding Jay’s
Baggie in her underwear drawer. But every time she reached for a pair of
panties, it reminded her what a sucker she’d been and of the risk she’d agreed
to take for him. She didn’t need any additional pressure from her underthings.
So she stuffed his stash into an orphaned sweat sock and hid it behind the
other refugees in her closet: boxes of Emerson’s letters, bags of slightly
snagged pantyhose, and her mother’s hand-me-downs.

So far, the strategy seemed to be
working. She went in there less often. But sometimes she got curious. Except
for the occasional joint in college, she’d never seen any drugs up close, and
the temptation had been growing to touch the white powder, smell it, and feel
the texture between her fingertips.

What kept her from it, mainly, was
the fear that she’d spill it into the carpet. Or sneeze, like in
Annie Hall
. Hundreds and hundreds of
dollars, gone.

She went back into her room and
wiggled a hand through the junk in her closet until she found it. Her fingers
closed around the shifting ball in the toe of the sock. Maybe it was from the
heat, or boredom, or her own imagination, but she swore it felt electric. That
it had a pulse, like a living heart. Or that it was a hand grenade, missing its
pin.

“Get it out of here,” she told
Jay’s machine, “or I’m flushing it down the toilet.”

* * * * *

Twenty minutes later, unshaven and
untucked, he was at her door.

“I hope you didn’t do anything
stupid,” he said.

She gave him an icy stare, turned, and
let him follow her toward her room. “I think it would have been one of the
smarter things I could have done.”

“You agreed to hold it for me.”

She spun to face him. “On the
condition you were getting it out of here soon.”

He threw up his hands. “The guy hasn’t
called yet. He’s supposed to call.”

Petie went crazy, chattering and
hopping on his little wire trapeze. Sarah ignored the stupid thing. “Your
friend has a lousy memory, so it becomes my problem?”

He worked his mouth into a sneer.
“You’re turning into a real bitch, you know that?”

“Well, pardon me for not being
deliriously happy. I’m broke, my only job reference is a felon, and I’ve got a
sock full of cocaine in my closet. I’m not having a good week.”

Jay grinned. Other people’s crimes
delighted him. They seemed to make his own more excusable. “Boss-man torched
the shop?”

“Shut up.” She looked away, angry
with herself—Jimmy’s biggest defender—for being the one to say it
first.

“So you’re off the hook.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Is he going to jail?”

“Jay…”

“Fine. I’ll get my stuff and go.”
He paused. She expected the puppy eyes. But he just looked…scared. “I’ll have
to keep it until he calls.”

She remembered his windshield. And
all those heartbreaking mornings putting him back together. She couldn’t watch
two of the men in her life self-destruct in one week. “Okay,” she said, on the
tail end of a long sigh. “I’ll keep it. But only for a few more days.”

“You sure?”

“No. But I don’t want you to have
it.”

He grinned. “I take it back. You’re
not a bitch. Look, once he gets the stuff, I’ll take you out to dinner.
Anywhere you want.”

She flashed him a skeptical look.

“Then how ’bout a cut?” he said.

“Of the coke?”

“No, a percentage. Of the money,
honey.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

She needed money but not that
badly. “Forget it. Just get it out of my apartment and out of my life.”

Chapter
10

“I spoke with her last night,”
Rashid said.

Milk dripped off the piece of
chocolate donut Emerson had just dunked into his glass. Rashid merely sipped
his tea, prepared, as always, with one sugar, stirred five times
counterclockwise. He set his cup on a folded napkin, arranged his small, brown
hands right over left on his lap, and gazed mildly ahead.

Emerson chewed his bite of donut.
He admired his housemate’s resolve. It terrified Emerson to imagine spending
the rest of his life with a stranger of his parents’ choosing. His greatest
fear was that she’d find him inadequate, that she’d long for a “manlier” man,
with broad shoulders and a square jaw, one who would take charge, make lots of
money, never complain, and always know how to fix things. Inevitably, she would
leave him and sleep with other men, like Sarah had. He swallowed and said, “How
did it go?”

Rashid shrugged. “She comes from a good
family. She is studying business management.”

“That’s it?”

“It’s a very demanding program. I
don’t see how she has time for much else.”

“No, I meant, that’s all you
learned about her?”

“It was a short conversation.”

“But she’s…no offense, but a total stranger.
What if you’re, you know, wildly incompatible?”

“My parents would never choose such
a woman for me,” Rashid said. “They know me best and only have my best
interests at heart.”

Emerson noted the quiet confidence
radiating from his friend. There had to be a great sense of security in knowing
that when you’re ready to marry, a compatible woman would appear. How much
time, money, and anxiety had Emerson wasted on women over the years, looking
for someone who could love him? And how many fragments of his soul had died in
the quest?

“At least her voice isn’t
unpleasant, and that is a good thing.” Rashid took another sip of tea, set the
cup gently on the table, and straightened his spoon. “Don’t you think?”

Emerson looked up from his
breakfast. It was the first time he’d seen Rashid display anything less than
utter sangfroid about his impending nuptials. The corners of Emerson’s mouth
dipped further down; his shoulder sagged. Maybe he would continue to flounder
with the opposite sex. Maybe he’d been hurt and disappointed. And maybe he’d
never find a woman who would love him as much or in the same way as he loved
her, but he hoped to God that when and if he did marry, he’d have more good
reasons to cling to than a voice he didn’t detest.

Chapter
11

When Sarah—at eighteen—had
strutted out of the dressing room of Sibley’s department store in what was to
become her first and only good suit, Emerson had laughed and said she looked
like a kid messing around in her mom’s closet. Deflated, she’d scuttled back
and reappeared in her everyday jeans and college sweatshirt.

Twenty-nine-year-old Sarah, having
forgiven him long ago for teasing her, worked hard to feel well groomed and
smart in her crisp white bow blouse, navy skirt, and classic blazer. She’d
reinforced the buttons, raised the hemline to a more fashionable length, and put
her hair up in an attempt to look older. But she still saw a child in the
mirror. Usually at times, like this one, when she wanted to be taken more seriously.

She sat across a big, busy
desk from one of the top art directors in the city, who’d been generous or
desperate enough to call her for an interview.

 
The art director, wearing her own bow
blouse but in a fabric much more expensive-looking than Sarah’s, flipped
through the pages of her portfolio without comment. Sarah could implode from
the effort not to fill in the empty space. As the typesetting machines in the
next room blipped and bleeped, Sarah hung on the woman’s every gesture: a nod,
a lift of an eyebrow, a turn of a multi-ringed hand. Each could be the
bellwether of her fate.

Finally she came to the end
and pushed the book toward Sarah like a picked-over plate after an unsatisfying
meal. Sarah could predict what would happen next. After a subway ride downtown
(two transfers), after walking four blocks in heels, pantyhose, and
ninety-degree heat, she’d just hear, “Thanks, but no thanks, and come back when
you’re more talented.”

Or older.

“We may be able to use you in
the bullpen,” the art director said. “It’s an entry-level position. And in a couple
of months, we’re going to retool the department for desktop publishing, so
you’ll have to take computer training. I hope that’s not a problem.”

Sarah’s eyebrows flew up. She’d
take anything, even make copies or spend half her days in the darkroom, for a
chance to work for this woman, in this agency with the blond paneling, clean
carpets, and smiling sweet receptionist who’d offered her iced tea. And for a
check every week. Better than wringing her hands, borrowing from Emerson or,
God forbid, her parents.

Or, in desperate moments,
when Dee Dee appeared at her door with another bill in her hand, of taking Jay
up on his offer.

“Entry level is fine,” Sarah said,
although the computer part sounded intimidating. She liked the tools of her
trade: the smell of wax, the squeak of the Lucite roller. After eight years,
she knew precisely the right amount of pressure to use on the X-Acto knife. She
could cut through amberlith masking film with barely a mark on the plastic
backing.

The art director looked
relieved. “Then you’ve just gone to the top of my list. May I call your
previous employer for a reference?”

A knot tightened Sarah’s
stomach. She felt her hair loosen, her bra straps slip, and her pantyhose creep
down her crotch. A scuff appeared on her pump that she hadn’t noticed before. In
her mind, she was suddenly eighteen and coming out of Sibley’s dressing room. Why
the hell was Emerson laughing? It was his job to adore her.

“Where did you work, again?”
The art director pecked around her big, busy desk and found Sarah’s résumé.
“Copy King, that’s right. I live near there. How awful about the fire. I saw
the article in last week’s
Tab
.”

“It was an accident,” Sarah blurted.
She couldn’t bring herself to say it was Jimmy’s fault.

Magically the newspaper appeared
out of piles of file folders and job bags. The art director read, rings tapping
on the desk, brows knitted together. Tap, tap, tap.

“It was an accident,” Sarah repeated,
softly. Jimmy accidentally committed arson for the insurance money.

But the art director had to
have known what really happened. She lived in the neighborhood. And she’d
probably just read the part that painted Sarah as a complete ditz, to boot.

Mouth tight, the art director
glanced at her watch. “I’m overdue for a meeting. We’ll...be in touch. Sally,
is it?”

* * * * *

The T station where she’d
come into town was closed because of a stalled train. The four city blocks in
heels, pantyhose, and ninety-degree heat became eight. Three transfers. She got
stuck in a rush hour throng punctuated by people’s failing deodorant and five o’clock
breath.

Finally, home loomed from six
houses down the block, but it didn’t feel like home. It was a place of chirping
parakeets and phones that didn’t ring. But she could stop playing grownup, take
her hair down, and be herself, young-looking and untalented and hounded by the
worst of luck, or at least bad timing, in a city that used to be kinder.

The bottom door was open.
She’d told the landlord twice about the lock that didn’t stay locked. But
upstairs was open, too, the paint on the doorjamb clawed away, the wood
splintered.

Her portfolio, purse, and
keys clattered to the tile. “Shhh!” she hissed, and with shaking hands scolded
them. She held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut, pressed an ear against
the battered door, a hand to her heart.

Nothing. She opened her eyes.
Maybe they’d gone. Maybe not.

Run.
Call the police.

No. Someone had come for the
coke. She couldn’t call the police.
What
if they didn’t find it, what if it’s still in the closet, what if—

She couldn’t take that
chance.

Crouching over her portfolio,
she worked the zipper open tooth by tooth and eased out an eighteen-inch
aluminum T-square, a graduation gift from Emerson. The poor, sad thing was too
short to use as designed; it wouldn’t stay put on the drafting table. But she kept
it in the back pocket of her portfolio for emergencies, like creeps on subways
and frat boys with overactive hormones. Gripping it at the end of the blade like
an outsized hammer, she pushed on the door.

Sarah’s breath ran shallow,
her legs unsteady.

There was no sound from
inside her apartment. Not even Dee Dee’s parakeet.

She wanted to call out,
hello, hello, anyone in here,
but even
she, who had blustered inside instead of calling the police, knew that would be
a stupid thing to do.

Then she saw the rubble of
her living room.

The slipcovers had been knifed
from the sofa and chairs, leaving the foam stripped naked. Upended books and
mementos littered their shelves. Dee Dee’s beloved plants were now strangled
vines; piles of dirt and pottery shards dribbled from the windowsills. Even the
vacuum cleaner, left out as a hint for Sarah, had been assaulted: the bag slashed,
clumps of dust spilling out like magma.

Her stomach convulsed. She got
to the bathroom just in time and didn’t notice until she was embracing the
toilet, spots dancing in front of her eyes, that the medicine cabinet was open.
Vials and potions had been spilled into the sink and on the tile. Even their
feminine hygiene supplies hadn’t escaped scrutiny. An open tampon blossomed in
a puddle of Dee Dee’s apricot facial toner.

The sweet alcohol smell made
Sarah gag.

She remained draped over the
toilet until the nausea passed. Then, from inside the throbbing in her head,
she heard the clump of sneakered feet running up the stairs.

“Sarah!” Dee Dee yelled. “You
left all your crap outside, did you know that—oh my God. Oh my God.” The
splintered door creaked. “Sarah! Sarah! Are you here, are you—”

“In here.” Sarah leaned her
burning cheek against the relative cool of the fake porcelain vanity. “It’s okay.
I think they’re gone.”

“Did you call the cops? I’m
calling the cops.”

Sarah tried to tell her not
to but felt another wave coming up and aimed toward the bowl. Most of it landed
there.

“We’ve been robbed.” Dee Dee gave
their address. The phone slammed. “They’re on their way.”

Shit
.
Shit. Shit.
Sarah hauled herself to wobbly feet and wiped her mouth
and hands. She passed the white blur of Dee Dee, who was making even more of a
wreck of the kitchen as she threw open drawers and cabinets and flung things
onto the floor, muttering, “I can’t fucking believe this. At least they didn’t
take the TV. Oh my God. I gotta have a cigarette. Where are my fucking
cigarettes?”

Still holding the T-square,
Sarah scrambled to her room. She reached her doorway and froze, mouth agape.
The interior decoration was courtesy of the same demented crew that had beaten
up the living room. The sheet was torn off the futon, the mattress slashed.
Cotton batting bled from the wounds. Her books had been yanked from their
plastic milk crates and splayed out at their spines. There was only a series of
open mouths where her dresser drawers used to be, the contents in a heap on the
floor. A seamed stocking leg stuck out from underneath one upturned drawer like
the remains of the Wicked Witch of the East.

And the T-shirt she slept in,
printed with the name of Jay’s band, lay in a clump in the corner, soaked with
what smelled like urine.

Sarah sucked back another
wave of nausea and lurched for the closet. And she found it: the knotted sweat
sock, the heft of the Baggie still in its toe. Only then did she let out her
breath. But the panic started again. What a picture this would make for
Boston’s finest.

She was unknotting the sock
and working out the Baggie on her way to the toilet when she nearly bumped into
her roommate, who was puffing on a slightly bruised Marlboro.

Dee Dee’s eyes were wild, ringed
with tarantula mascara. “Did you see what they did to the fucking bathroom?
Fifteen bucks for that bottle of toner. Fucking animals.” Her gaze landed on
the Baggie and she backed away, palms raised as if Sarah had pulled a gun. “Oh
my God,” she said through clenched teeth. “What are you doing with that, are
you insane? The cops will be here any second!”

“I know, why do you think
I’m—?”

Dee Dee shoved her into the
bathroom. “In here. Flush it. Flush it!”

Sarah’s fingers slipped
against the bag as she fumbled with the twist-tie.

“Stop fucking around, drop
the whole thing!”

“It’ll never flush like that,
it’s too big, I’m trying to...there. Got it.”

And Sarah did what she’d
wanted to do for two weeks, except she never got to touch the coke. No time to
satisfy her curiosity. White powder shimmered across the surface of the water.
Dee Dee watched like a nervous father-to-be, sucking hard on her cigarette.

“Don’t forget the bag,” Dee
Dee said. “Hurry up!”

She dropped the bag and tie,
flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and flushed again, just to make sure. Dee
Dee sat on the edge of the tub, her head cradled in her palms.

Sarah picked up the wet
tampon and lofted it into the trash.

“You should leave that.” Dee
Dee took a puff. “For evidence.”

“They’ll have enough evidence
without it,” Sarah said. “Believe me.”

Dee Dee got up. “I’m going to
check my room. See if anything’s missing. You should, too.”

Sneakers squeaked away on the
wet tile. But Sarah couldn’t face her room. She should drag Jay over and make
him clean it up. He was the one who should have to pick up the shirt, the
broken glass, the—

A scream exploded from Dee
Dee’s room. Sarah dashed back and found the girl sobbing hysterically. Nothing appeared
to be out of place, except for a feathered lump at her roommate’s feet.

* * * * *

Nothing had been stolen and
no human had been harmed, so the men in blue who came with their clipboards and
guns showed little compassion about small things like the rape and pillage of their
possessions.

Of course, when Sarah called
Jay, his answering machine was on. Furious, she slammed the receiver down
without leaving a message. It made a satisfyingly musical crash and she stood
over it with her arms crossed, enjoying the echo.

Dee Dee would have rushed out
and bitched her up and down for abusing her precious phone, but so what. Dee
Dee wasn’t home. She’d gone to see her boyfriend—the parakeet’s latest
namesake—to be comforted.

Comfortless, Sarah stayed
behind.

She let out a long sigh. Feeling
calmer, she got Jay’s machine again and told him to call immediately. Then she
fetched a pair of rubber gloves, a clothespin, and a plastic bag. She disposed of
the T-shirt, the tampons, and the shredded plants. Gathered up the bedding and
the stuff from the drawers and began the first of many loads of wash.

As she was running back
upstairs, the phone rang. An adrenaline buzz surged through her with all the
nasty things she wanted to tell Jay. She grabbed the receiver.

“You son of a bitch, you tell
your
friends
to keep the fuck away
from us.”