Stewart and Jean (2 page)

Today was like that. She’d brought a lunch to eat in the park, but it was past the middle of the day and she still wasn’t hungry. So she decided to hang out at Temple. She got a hot chocolate in a to-go cup from their café and took it with her as she went wandering through the books. First she paused among the bestseller display tables, to see what the world was reading. Some of them, like Cormac McCarthy, she planned to get to someday. Others she gawked at with a kind of delicious, self-indulgent horror, like a series of books called
Skinny Bitch
. The cashiers and manager stood in a square enclosure, raised like a dais, presumably so they could keep an eye out for shoplifters. She’d never exchanged a word with any of them except when she was buying something, but they’d become familiar enough that she kind of felt like she knew them.

She didn’t let herself get too caught up in the bestsellers, since she was only here for an hour at most and didn’t have a whole idle day stretching before her. Moving through the display tables and past the Sci-Fi section, she made a right before hitting General Fiction—tucked in behind the register and before the bathroom hallway was a tightly-packed niche containing Cultural Studies. She’d thought Feminism was back here, too, but she’d misremembered—it was around the corner. Still, it was a nice quiet section, and in front of her face she saw Jacobs’s
Life and Death of American Cities
, which was on her list of books to read. A moment after she’d picked it up and started thumbing through it, she was absorbed. There was a step-stool, for reaching the higher shelves. Absently Jean sat on it and turned the pages back to start the book at the beginning.

For a long time she stayed that way, alone, except for a guy in his forties whose body odor was somewhat strong and who crouched near her, reading Schopenhauer with an intense scowl. Jean didn’t mind the company, or the odor. She would have liked to think his company was more suitable for her than that of most of her web design colleagues, though she didn’t know if that was true. Guys who read Schopenhauer were cool.

Sipping her hot chocolate, she realized it wasn’t hot anymore. That snapped her out of her absorption, since it meant she must have been here a while. She checked her phone and saw that it was indeed time to head back up to the office. Slurping down the dregs of her chocolate, she headed to the cashiers, Jacobs book in hand.

As she approached the register she wasn’t paying much attention, because she was looking around for a wastebasket to throw her now-empty cup in, so she didn’t actually look fully at the cashier till after she’d extended the arm holding the book. Then her fingers went flaccid and she took a step backward as the book fell to the floor. At the slapping sound it made, people turned to look.

Towering above her on the raised platform, looming over her, Stewart looked like he belonged here, in his black T-shirt and trimmed goatee. Holding his eyes on her with no special effort, he blithely said, “I saw you come in.”

But if that were true he must have been somewhere other than here at the registers. Because she would have noticed him when she came in, standing here among all these guys she almost felt like she knew.

Again there was a mental hum that all but supplanted the real noise of the store around her. Again there was a strong and unstable sensation that she dared not quite look at, but this time it was more akin to fear than anger. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

Stewart frowned and turned an ear towards her. “What?” he said, with apparent sincerity.

“What are you doing here?” she repeated, at closer to a normal volume.

“I work here,” he said, as if it were obvious, which it was.

Jean took a step towards him, out of some complicated mixture of motives. Underfoot she could feel the book she’d dropped, and was dimly aware she should move back, because you weren’t supposed to step on books. She had no idea what to say to him. Whatever she might say, she was afraid it would come out as a plea rather than a threat.

Suddenly there was the short, heavyset, bald Jamaican manager standing next to Stewart, pointing at her feet and saying, “Excuse me, please don’t walk on the books, ma’am!”

She stepped back. She crouched down to pick up the book; the whole time she kept her eyes on Stewart, which meant that she had to fish around blindly with her hand to find the book, which probably made her look ridiculous, possibly crazy.

Stewart held her gaze, too, but he did it uncertainly, as if he weren’t sure why she was reacting like this. Putting on a show for everyone else. Fucking with her. It was weird, the sense of betrayal that was mixed in with everything she was feeling. Probably because of how cute she’d thought he was when they’d first met, back when their date was going well. She remembered how excited she’d been, when it had turned out they were both from Arkansas.

She placed the book on the counter. Her voice was like a heavy bucket filled to the brim that she was carefully trying to move without spilling as she said, “This is really fucked up.”

Stewart nodded and said, “Yeah,” as if her observations were regrettable but true. He picked up the book. “Did you want to purchase this?”

“Fuck you,” she managed to say, and walked carefully out. It was harder than it had been the other night at the beer garden.

Upstairs at her office she went into the bathroom. What she really wanted was to wash her face with cold water, but she was wearing make-up and didn’t want to screw it up. Even so, she managed to cool off pretty well. Or so she thought. But she didn’t last ten minutes at her computer till she had to again retreat to the ladies’ room.

This time her co-worker Marissa noticed her condition. As Jean walked by her cubicle Marissa asked if she was okay, but Jean seemed not to hear. Marissa hesitated, then returned to her computer screen, where she had been trading “yo’ mamma” jokes with a friend over Instant Messenger. Jean was probably just sick, like to her stomach, and wouldn’t appreciate Marissa intruding. But Marissa couldn’t keep her mind on her work. She knew good and well that Jean hadn’t looked merely sick to her stomach—something had happened. She’d looked like someone had died, and it was sad to imagine her alone in the bathroom with whatever the bad thing was. Finally Marissa got up to go check on her, out of concern but also a bit out of nosiness and boredom.

Besides, she was always on the look-out for chances to get to know Jean better. Marissa found her co-worker fascinating. She was so smart and confident and centered. Almost like she was on a higher plane or something.

Upon entering the bathroom, Marissa saw that Jean hadn’t even managed to make it to a stall. Her body was a curve supported by the straight, joint-locked left arm attached to the rim of the sink, quivering with tension. Her right hand was raised to her face, her head was bowed. Approaching from behind, Marissa could see that Jean was shaking, but couldn’t yet tell if she was crying, really. “Jean?” she asked, holding out her hand but not quite daring to touch Jean with it, wanting to see her face but afraid that walking around to look at it unasked would be a breach of privacy.

“Hey, Marissa,” Jean answered in a raspy, shaky whisper.

This was enough of an invitation for Marissa to step around in front of Jean, look at her face, and come closer to touching her arm, though her hand still hovered an inch or two away. “What
happened
?”

Most of Jean’s downturned face was hidden by her hand, but Marissa could make out something like a grimace on her mouth, and the noise she made was almost like a disbelieving laugh. She shook her head, and said, “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Of course I will. Come on, tell me what’s wrong.”

Jean took in and released a few more shuddery breaths. “There’s a guy in the bookstore downstairs.”

Then it seemed like she would quit talking. “Yeah?” prompted Marissa. A guy in the bookstore downstairs? What was the worst he could have done, flash her? That didn’t seem like such a big deal.

Still in that shaky voice, still with her face hidden, Jean said, “We’re both from the same place.”

Marissa tried to recall Jean’s talk about home. “Kentucky?” she hazarded.

“No. Arkansas.”

“Okay.”

Marissa waited. It started to seem like Jean wasn’t going to volunteer anything more. Could it be some Southern thing? Although she was starting to suspect Jean just plain didn’t want to talk about it, she couldn’t help but prod her once more: “And, so, I mean, did he do something?”

“No. I did.” Jean shrugged, and sighed, and shook her head as if it were just one of those things, and said, “I shot his brother.”

“What?”

“I shot his brother.”

“Like, with what?”

“I shot him in the chest with a gun and killed him. This was in Rogers. Rogers, Arkansas. That’s not far from Fayetteville. We were at some friends’ house, but the friends weren’t there. Me and him had been flirting, I guess. He tried to rape me, so I grabbed the gun and I shot him.”

Marissa gaped at her. “Oh. My.
God
.”

Jean’s trembling intensified, and a tear slid down her chin out from behind her hand. “And I don’t feel fucking bad about it,” she said, her voice thicker.

“Oh my God,” Marissa said again, then, rallying herself, “No, of course you shouldn’t. You have a right to
defend
yourself!” Privately, she was reeling. It was one thing to know that Jean hailed from gun country. It was another to hear she’d killed somebody with one, regardless of the circumstances. And apparently without much legal fuss.

Soon she was able to blink past the after-image of the revelation, and return to the issue at hand: “You said this guy’s
brother
was in the bookstore downstairs?”

“Yes.”

“What, he just happens to be in town?”

“He moved to New York. He fucking works down there now. I guess he’s stalking me.” And she recounted to Marissa how she’d met Stewart; how he’d supposedly been looking on OKCupid for New York girls, and happened to see her picture; how that apparently had been motive enough for him to move up here; how he’d sent her this charming albeit intense message on OKCupid, and after going back and forth about it she’d written back and agreed to meet; how they’d been having actually a pretty nice date, when Stewart had sprung his trap on her.

“Jesus,” Marissa said. One of the oddest parts of the story, to her, was the notion of some guy in Arkansas idly scrolling through the dating profiles of girls a thousand miles away in New York. Why? Because he couldn’t jerk off without fantasizing he was boning someone in a big city?

“What are you going to do?” asked Marissa.

“I don’t know,” Jean said. She still had not quite lost control, though her voice was slightly wobblier and tears were still leaking out from behind her hand. “I mean, I guess he’s just going to be
down
there now.”

It was true that Marissa had been in part distracted from her compassion by the fact that this was some of the juiciest gossip she’d ever heard. But now she began to realize the horror of Jean’s situation. “No,” she said firmly. “No, he can’t do that.”

“It’s not illegal to work there.”

“We’ll explain to the owner and make him fire the guy.”

Jean shrugged dubiously.

By now, Marissa had touched Jean. Her hand squeezing the other woman’s shoulder, she said, “Anyway, for right now the important thing is that we need to get you out of here. Just say you’re sick and go home, I’ll cover for you.” A thought struck her. “How did this guy know you worked here?”

“I told him, like an idiot. During our date.”

“You’re not an idiot, don’t call yourself that. But you didn’t tell him where you live, did you? Like, your address, or exact train stop?”

“No.” Jean paused. She seemed calmer, trembled less; Marissa thought that this concrete question, scary as it might be, was distracting Jean somewhat from her plight. “I don’t remember doing that. I’m sure I wouldn’t have. I mean, he knows I live in Astoria. He could tell that from my OKCupid profile.”

“Right. Well, listen, I don’t mean to freak you out, but you need to make sure he doesn’t follow you home. Like, wait for you to come out of the building and trail you without your noticing.”

“Right.” Again, the introduction of a practical consideration seemed to have a calming effect. Jean’s voice was steadier, and she even let her hand fall from her face to reveal her damaged makeup. However, she still didn’t look directly at Marissa as she said, “But, I mean, I’d never know for sure if he wasn’t trailing me, or if I just didn’t notice him.”

“For today at least you don’t have to worry about that. After you leave I’ll go downstairs and make sure he’s still there in the store. If it turns out he did disappear around the same time you left, then I’ll call and warn you and we’ll figure something out.”

Jean agreed to the plan. Marissa escorted her down to hail a taxi. Marissa told everyone that it was convenient for her to accompany Jean, since she hadn’t taken her lunch break yet and could go ahead and do that now.

Marissa put Jean in a cab and watched till it was safely out of sight. Then she turned to face Temple Books.

She went in and scanned the interior. She didn’t love hanging out in bookstores as much as Jean did, but she’d been in here several times and the place was more or less familiar, and as she scanned the employees behind the register she recognized most of them. There was the Jamaican in the purple knit shirt, who she thought was a manager. There was a guy in a tweed jacket and a bow tie, even though he was only like forty—he was kind of cool-looking, actually. The third guy behind the register had to be this Stewart person. He wore a black T-shirt and had a neatly-trimmed goatee, just like Jean had described him.

Marissa pretended to be browsing through the bestseller tables as she eyed the guy. Jean had also called him cute, but Marissa didn’t see that at all. Sure, his haircut was fine and he wasn’t fat or anything. But his eyes were too big, almost buggy, and you could tell from his face he’d have jowls one day.

He glanced at her, then away, then again glanced at her and looked away, then finally held eye contact and raised his shoulders and jutted his head at her with a “what?!” gesture. It affronted Marissa that he would have the gall to even return her gaze, considering the shit he was pulling. She marched up to his register, tilting her head back so she could look up at him, and demanded, “Excuse me, but are you looking at me?”