10
Stevie ran back to the building, gripping the pizza box to her abdomen. She thumped the elevator button with her elbow and kicked at the door in lieu of knocking.
“I like your hustle,” Nate said as she pushed past him with the pizza. “Delivery should feel more like a home invasion.”
“Take it,” Stevie said, shoving the box on the kitchen bar. “I dropped my phone. I’ll be right back.”
Stevie couldn’t handle being in the apartment with Nate in the state she was in—she couldn’t handle being in her own skin in the state she was in.
Nice coat. What the actual ever-living fuck did that mean?
The rat room was the only private space she could think of. She took the elevator down, scooted aside the mountain of boxes,
and disappeared into the space behind the bins. The garbage smelled of stale beer and there was a pong of bleach. It suited
her mood. This was the kind of space you spiraled in. Her hands were shaking as she made a video call to Janelle.
“Merry Christmas!” Janelle was sitting in her bedroom at home, which had bright lemon-yellow walls covered in empty pegboards. All the tools were at Ellingham. She had entwined her braids with red velvet and arranged them on her head with a white pom-pom on top. “Wait. What’s wrong? Where are you?”
“He commented on my post. He said nice coat.”
“I will find where he is,” Janelle said, hissing through her teeth. “And I will end this. I swear to you.”
“What does it mean?”
“You know what it means? It means he knows he fucked up and he’s sorry and he’s trying to be cute—”
“Wait . . .”
“No no no. You need to let me finish. He is feeling sorry for himself right now, Stevie. Sorry because he knows he is so far
beneath you and he’s a sad little rich boy. I know this is hard, but you ignore him. Because he will do the same thing over
and over. You have the upper hand. You are having an amazing time. . . .”
“I spent yesterday afternoon with the kid down the hall who wants to be a funeral director. She showed me how to sneak around
the basement and steal mousetraps.”
“That actually sounds like something you might like,” Janelle said. “And you gave toys to dogs and you’re in New York and
you’re beautiful and smart and he is nothing. He is trash. Sad little rich boys are a dime a dozen. You are worth so much more.”
Stevie pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.
“Listen,” Janelle said, “I was thinking about this today and I even talked to my family about it. We should go there, me and Vi. For New Year’s Eve. Hotels are hard to get, but . . .”
Stevie pulled her hands away from her eyes. Yes. Janelle and Vi. Here. That would fix everything—or, at least, something would
change and somehow it would be better. Her friends made it better.
“You can just stay here,” Stevie said quickly. “There’s plenty of room.”
“Really? Would Nate be okay with that?”
“He’d be fine with it,” Stevie said. “It would be amazing. He’ll love it. The four of us in a free apartment on New Year’s
Eve. We need to do this.”
“Exactly,” Janelle said. “I’ll see if Vi can fly here to Chicago and do a stopover, and then we can go to New York. We’ll
change around our tickets to Vermont and then we’ll figure out a way to get back. We will get to you. Just don’t reply, okay?
Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Whenever you feel like you want to reply, text whatever you were going to say to him to me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I need to go. We’re going to play Monopoly with my grandma. It’s a tradition. You know I love you?”
“I love you too,” Stevie said, holding up her finger to the camera. Janelle did the same. The thousand-mile touch.
Nate had left her half a pizza and retreated back into his room. She took a piece and ate it without tasting it. All the good that had been done in that walk with Benny and a roomful of dogs was undone by those two words.
Nice coat.
It could be sarcastic. It was probably sarcastic. He had sent her the coat because they had a personal joke about it, about
how she only liked him for his coat. It wasn’t serious. Maybe the coat had been a peace offering and the fact that she was
wearing it meant that he knew she had accepted the peace offering.
Which meant what, if true? That it was okay now? That breaking her heart and life into little pieces was fine?
It didn’t help that Murph was back on his screaming journey. Stevie heard someone pounding on Helen’s door, but there was
no answer. She put in her earbuds and made a nest of the sofa cushions. She must have fallen asleep at some point, because
she opened her eyes to find Nate shaking her arm; it was morning.
“The bird,” he said, “is killing me. It just. Keeps. Screaming. And it’s so. Fucking. Hot.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Stevie said, pushing herself up from the sofa. A mission. This was good. Without a mission, she would
bedrot and spiral.
When Stevie approached Helen’s door, she could hear movement inside. She knocked.
PINEAPPLE LOVE YOU HELLO PINEAPPLE HELLO HELLO
The door to the left opened and Sophie leaned out, dressed in a yellow workout set, her breath coming quick.
“He was going all night, screaming about pineapple,” she said, wiping sweat from her brow.
“He likes pineapple,” Stevie said. “He’ll do anything for it.”
“I know. He yells it all the time. It’s usually annoying, but last night we could barely sleep. I’m trying to exercise and
block it out. I knocked a few times, but she didn’t answer. I’m going to lose my mind.”
Now two people needed Stevie to do a job, and a job meant that her mind remained off the nice coat of it all. So she went
down the hall, took a deep breath, and knocked on 8A. Arthur opened the door, holding a dish towel and dressed in a navy-blue
cardigan and what could only be described as slacks.
“It’s . . . Murph,” she said. “He’s really loud. He’s been going all night. It even kept Sophie and Imogen awake. And Helen isn’t answering her door. I wasn’t sure
what to do.”
“Oh no!” he said. “Sophie didn’t sleep? Oh, that’s no good. Let me call Helen. Come in.”
Arthur’s apartment was a maze of furniture.
It looked antique, all dark wood with spindle legs and carved edging, but it took up most of the floor space.
To get to one of his three plump sofas, you had to make a left at a glass-fronted bookcase full of art books, circle around a coffee table that hosted a battle of small metal soldiers in formation, and step over an elaborate footstool with a red velvet cushion top.
The wood floor was covered in a patchwork of overlapping tapestry rugs, giving it a soft but uneven feel.
The walls were similarly overtaken with mirrors and paintings.
On the off chance there was a spare few inches of space anywhere, Arthur had filled it with another antique pot or lamp or stack of art books.
Somehow, he had managed to get a full-sized Christmas tree into the room, half blocking the credenza that supported the television and turntable.
It was elegantly if heavily decorated in glass balls and small nutcrackers that balanced precariously on the branches, with twinkling lights signaling alarm around them.
“That bird,” he said, taking his phone from a small silver tray, “is a menace. She’s had him almost as long as I’ve known her. He has
to be twenty-five years old if he’s a day. Now, let’s see . . .”
He placed the phone to his ear and waited. He frowned, looked at his phone, hung up and tried again.
“She’s not answering,” he said. “She could be out. She doesn’t go out much anymore. You saw her walking. But . . . let’s give it a minute and I’ll try one more time.
How are you settling in?”
“It’s okay,” Stevie said.
“Is Benny bothering you?” he asked conspiratorially. “I saw her go to your door.”
Arthur certainly kept watch over the hall.
“No,” Stevie said. “She took me to the shelter. We gave out toys to dogs.”
“Oh.” His expression fell. “Well, that’s good. And have you been sightseeing? Going to shows?”
“I have to go to the library for an exhibition on Watergate for school.”
“Oh, that sounds interesting! I remember Watergate. Oh. What a scandal that was, though it almost seems quaint now. The seventies was a gentler time. Well, not here in the city. New York was a wreck in the seventies, but I loved it here.”
Arthur drifted for a moment, his gaze landing on the large Bette Midler at the Continental Baths poster on the wall.
“I saw her perform there twenty times,” he said proudly. “They called her Bathhouse Bette. She made the bathhouse the place
to be, back before gay culture was so mainstream. It’s so different now. I’ve lost a lot of people, a lot of friends. I was
here in New York when AIDS hit in the eighties. I saw it tear apart couples and communities. I could walk down a block in
the West Village and point to a window in every other building, to where a friend of mine had lived—a friend who is gone.
People don’t understand now. It ravaged us. And no one seemed to care outside of us, in the gay community. I helped make squares
on the quilt. You know about the quilt?”
“The AIDS quilt,” Stevie said. She did actually remember this from modern American history—the massive quilt made to memorialize
those who had passed from the disease. “In history class.”
“History.” Arthur smiled wryly. “Well, I’m glad they teach it. I went to see it in 1992, when it was displayed on the Mall
in Washington, DC. It stretched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. There was no treatment then. It was
just a death sentence. I sat by so many sick people. And I thought, you know, it’ll get me too someday. It never did. I got
lucky. Anyway! I’m being morbid. Let me try again.”
Arthur cleared his throat, returned from his memories, and picked up his phone. He frowned.
“Still nothing. Let me try downstairs and see if anyone saw her leave. I think Al is on. She’s got Al on her payroll. She
pays him in baked goods and he watches out for her. She’s a bit of a snoop. Always wants to know who’s going in and out. I
bet she’ll hate that we’re doing the same to her!”
He called down to the doorman and Stevie listened to the end of the conversation. No. No one had seen Helen go in or out.
“This is strange,” he said, folding his hands together. “It’s not like her to let Murph go on like that or not to answer her
phone or her door. I have a key for emergencies. Maybe we should . . . let’s just go and have a look to set our minds at ease.”
The we and our in that meant that Stevie was involved, and that Arthur assumed she felt as he did. Stevie’s mind had been largely at ease
until she’d started this conversation. Now she thought less about the noises coming from Murph and more of the yawning silence
where Helen’s replies should have been.
When they unlocked Helen’s door, the lights were on.
“Helen?” Arthur called.
This is when they were attacked. Murph dive-bombed down from one of the living room bookcases. Stevie held up her arms reflexively
and Arthur let out a yelp, but Murph landed on the back of the kitchen chair closest to the door and began to scream.
LOVE YOU LOVE YOU LOVE YOU ASSHOLE HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO
“Oh God,” Arthur said, quickly closing the door behind them and edging away from Murph. “I hate it when he’s loose. Helen! Helen, we’re in here!”
Murph paced from side to side urgently but lowered his voice.
love you love you love you love you love you
“Helen!” Arthur called again. “It’s me, and I have Stevie with me from next door. Are you home?”
No reply.
asshole asshole pineapple love you love you
“Ugh,” Arthur said. “This terrible bird.”
Stevie didn’t think Murph was a terrible bird. He was loud, sure, but he seemed like a smart bird, and the way he was dipping
around and shifting from foot to foot suggested agitation.
“Helen!” Stevie called, louder than Arthur. They exchanged looks and walked deeper into the apartment at the same cautious
pace. She went into the spare bedroom Helen used as a storage room and pantry. It was lined with metal shelving, full of organized
baking supplies and household goods, all marked in masking tape labels. There was a section for Murph, with his carrier and
bags of seed. Helen was well stocked. Tidy. Prepared.
“Not in here either,” Arthur said from the bedroom doorway. “Not in the bathroom . . .”
Stevie joined him in the bedroom, which was painted a deep plum color.
This was an intimate room, warm—like a heart.
The furniture was made of heavy, dark wood, with delicate lace coverings protecting the surfaces.
There was a worn tapestry carpet on the floor, dotted with white feathers from Murph’s visits.
“Maybe she’s at the doctor’s,” Arthur said, putting his hands on his hips. “That’s really the only place she goes. Maybe Al
stepped away for a minute when she went.”
“The lights are on,” Stevie said. Both bedside table lamps were lit. “Would she go out and leave all the lights on and Murph
out of his cage?”
“I wouldn’t think so . . .”
Helen’s bedside table was crowded—more medication bottles, half a glass of water, an alarm clock, glasses, skin lotion, meditation
beads, a tarot deck. The real surprise was the bed: the right half of it was for sleeping, and the left was full of books,
messy piles of them, along with a lap desk, a small portable radio, bags of hard candy, and some knitting. This was a professional-grade
bedrot setup, and Stevie had to admire it.
She glanced over the titles: Healing from Within; Letting Go; And Then the Rain Came: A Guide to Radical Release; You Are the Monument: How to Tear Down the Architecture of Pain and Build Yourself Anew; The Journey Is the Journey: Trauma as an Agent of Change; Back to You: How to Regain Control After a Manipulative Relationship.
Helen had been through some things. Her shit, it seemed, was real.
Murph flew in and danced along the edge of the dressing table. He was cawing gently now, as if he was trying to soothe himself.
Something about what she was seeing was off.
“The books are wrong,” Stevie said.
“What?”
“Doesn’t it look like they were in stacks?” Stevie said, pointing at the tumble of books. “She keeps everything neat. Look,
the bed’s all shifted. The blanket’s pulled that way, toward the wall . . .”
Stevie moved around the bed. There, on the floor between the bed and the wall, was Helen, her pale hand clutching a fistful
of the blanket.