Authors: Kate Rockland
“What the hell is that noise?” Noah asked, glaring at her alarm clock. “It’s not even five o’clock!”
“I get up now and eat breakfast,” Alexis said defensively. “And then I go work out.”
“Now?” he gasped. “I didn’t even get up this early when I was a professional athlete and trained every day. I mean, it’s just freakishly early. The only person I knew up at this time was my grandfather, who was a lobster fisherman. And he only got up that early because he had to earn his bread that way.”
“Well, this is me,” Alexis said defensively, scooting out of bed. She realized that at some point in the night, Noah had put an extra blanket on her.
He followed her into the kitchen, then watched her slice her banana. She kept peering over her shoulder at him, feeling uncomfortable to be observed so closely. “Is that
it
?” he asked, after she’d finished her banana and milk.
She sighed. “Yes. I told you, I’m really careful about what I eat.”
“Well, that just won’t do,” Noah said. “Stay here. I’m going out to get some groceries. I’ll be right back.”
As he turned, Billy, who had woken up to pee, shuffled down the hallway, still half asleep and rubbing his eyes. He wore blue silk pajamas, and Alexis saw he’d gotten his hair cut in a slight Mohawk. It looked very nonthreatening on Billy.
He glanced at the kayak, then the bike. Then shrugged.
When he saw Noah he stood still and stared. Alexis realized Noah was still half naked, and as Billy looked from her to him and back again it occurred to her it looked like they’d slept together. Billy gave Alexis a wink.
“Hello, delicious naked black man,” Billy said, extending his hand.
Alexis closely watched Noah’s reaction. If he didn’t like Billy’s flamboyancy, she’d drop him like a hot stone. She was very loyal to Billy. But Noah just did his deep, booming laugh and leaned across the breakfast bar to shake Billy’s hand. “You must be Alexis’s roommate Billy,” he said. “I’m the random guy she met last night who was teaching a cooking class that she decided to commit suicide by knife in.”
Billy, with great reluctance, tore his eyes off Noah’s physique and truly saw Alexis for the first time. “Babe!” he said. “What the hell happened to your hand?” He gently cradled her hand in his own, examining it.
She waved him away. “It’s nothing.”
“She got fifteen stitches and a prescription for painkillers,” Noah informed Billy.
“Well, hooray for the painkillers. I might take one myself for fun. Has she had one yet this morning?” Billy asked. “She seems to be sore. I can tell, she didn’t even finish her banana.”
“I’m standing right here, you know, guys,” Alexis said drolly. They were discussing her like two surgeons standing over an open chest cavity, ready to begin surgery.
“He’s right,” Noah said. “You should probably pop one of those babies right after I make you some breakfast. With no food in your stomach they’d make you really nauseous.”
He sauntered over to put on his clothes, which, as Alexis could have guessed, were strewn about in the living room. One sock was hanging from a lamp. She pictured his apartment again, and added dirty laundry hung about to her vision. Definitely not her type.
“I’ll be right back, guys,” he said, and after tucking his phone and scruffy brown leather wallet into his back pocket, he was gone, carrying his sports equipment downstairs on both shoulders. She felt the absence of him. The room was better with him in it, she decided.
“Wow!” Billy exclaimed, when the door shut behind Noah. “That guy is gorgeous. Chocolate that melts in your mouth. Yum.”
Alexis laughed. “He’s super … nice. He wants to open his own restaurant. He kind of reminds me of a Labrador.”
“Well, woof!” Billy said, making them both giggle like schoolchildren. He plopped down next to her on the couch and put her feet in his lap, massaging her ankles. This was why he was her best friend. Billy just went with the flow. He didn’t ask what Noah was doing here, or why Alexis broke her steadfast no-sleepovers rule. Billy was entirely nonjudgmental. At least of her. He made fun of other gay friends, for example: “Oh, you know those queens.
So
gay. Always having the same argument over what country to adopt a baby from. It’s silly. They should just adopt me.”
He also had zero tolerance for lesbians. “Terrible haircuts and oh, my god, when they fight they punch each other
in the face
! It’s despicable.” Alexis would try and point out that probably not every lesbian couple went around punching one another, certainly she couldn’t imagine Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi DeGeneres socking each other in the eyeball on a daily basis, but when she brought up these points Billy would wave his hand at her or change the subject. And yet, he was nothing if not a walking contradiction. Alexis had
several
times caught him crying over gay or lesbian wedding announcements in the Style section of the newspaper. “We’ve come so far,” he’d say, when she pressed him.
In addition to his various prejudices, Billy had steadfast opinions about which he never wavered: Asian women caused the most traffic accidents. If you see a blond person in Manhattan they’re from Sweden. Going out drinking when you have a cold cures you faster than cold medicine and rest. If you play golf you are a Republican.
Alexis peered at Billy more closely. “You look tired.”
He ran his hand over the frayed edges of his Mohawk. He had blue circles under his eyes. He put down her foot, looking distracted. “Yeah, I don’t know what my deal is lately. I’ve been bartending nights for five years, and I never used to get tired.”
“Did you go out after?” Sometimes Billy went what he called “gay dancing” after work. She’d gone with him a few times. They’d dress up like David Bowie, affix silver glitter lightning bolts to their cheeks, strap on platform shoes, and head out to Billy’s favorite West Village bars, where they’d drink and dance themselves silly. Once Billy had talked her into wearing a skintight white bodysuit he’d taken home from the set of a future-themed movie that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel. “You look like a slutty Princess Leia!” he’d exclaimed, clapping his hands at the sight of her.
“No, that’s just it,” Billy said. He rummaged around in their cupboard for a few moments, and then pulled out a box of Raisin Bran. “I went straight home after work and I
still
feel like shit.” His forehead had a light sheen of sweat on it.
“Maybe you should go to the doctor,” she said, leaning against the kitchen doorframe. The room was so small that she could have reached out and touched his silk sleeve. “You might have mono.”
His head was inside the refrigerator looking for the milk but she still heard his snort. “I don’t have mono,” he said. “Korean people are immune to it.”
“Billy! Anyone can get mono.”
He turned to her, his left hand perched on his hip, and gestured with the milk carton. “Seriously, babe. Have you ever fucking heard of a Korean person getting fucking
mono
?”
She shook her head. She walked toward him and put her hand on his forehead and gasped. “Billy! You are burning up. Let’s go, I am putting you back to bed.”
He poured his cereal and milk into the bowl, took a few bites, and sighed, putting his bowl in the sink. “Not hungry. But if I go back to bed I don’t get to see more of Noah. And I want to see more of Noah. Nice, naked Noah.”
She smiled. “You can after you take a nap. I’m serious. I only have one of you.”
He let her lead him into his room, which he’d decorated with thick red-and-green-striped wallpaper, a Jonathan Adler headboard he’d been given as a gift from the set of
The Young and the Restless,
and the stuffed head of a deer they’d found at the Hell’s Kitchen flea market two summers ago. He had a portable bar straight out of
Mad Men
in the corner, and six-hundred-thread-count sheets from Barneys. “Fabulous Prep” was how he’d described it over the phone to Alexis, as Billy had found the apartment and moved in first, when she was still living in Connecticut and applying to law school the summer after college.
He took off his pajama top and Alexis had to cover her mouth to stifle a scream.
“What? Oh, I know. Gross, right?”
Underneath Billy’s left arm was a plum-sized lump.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
He slowly lifted his arm and inspected it casually, like it was a freckle or speck of dirt. “I don’t know, it just seemed to materialize there a week ago. I was hoping if I ignored it, it would go away. You know how that sometimes happens,” he said, laughing weakly.
He avoided looking at her.
She swallowed, not wanting Billy to see how scared she was. “Sarah from the gym is married to a doctor at NYU,” she said. “I’ll call her.”
“Fine,” Billy said. His voice didn’t have an ounce of its usual attitude as he climbed into bed. “But come in here and get me if Noah takes his shirt off again.”
“I will, I promise,” Alexis said, smiling, and gently closed the door behind her.
The newness of Noah, and the throb of her finger, now were all forgotten as Alexis shakily dialed Sarah’s 718-area-code number. She hoped she was home and not training today. Luckily, she reached her, and after Sarah promised she’d page her husband at work Alexis set down the phone, sitting on the couch and staring out the window. She’d felt a bolt of fear run through her body, and she didn’t like it. Billy was her entire family, hook, line, and sinker. Her mother was a drunk, Mark was dead, and her father hated her. Those were the bare-bones facts. She had the sudden image of that fat girl’s sister, what was her name, at
Oprah,
sticking her big, chubby finger in her face and shouting,
Obviously you don’t have any family values or else you would never have said that just to win an argument!
Emily, that had been her name. Shoshana’s even fatter sister. “Family values,” Alexis said now, aloud in her apartment, to the dust that settled into the floorboards, the sunlight streaming into the window, which had a crack running along the bottom.
Her head perked up at the sound of the buzzer, and she walked trancelike over to push her finger on the plastic button.
She could barely see Noah’s face over the three stuffed-to-the-brim brown grocery bags. She decided not to mention Billy; after all, she wasn’t sure what the lump meant, and she didn’t want to spoil Noah’s good mood. He was whistling.
“Now you just sit right there and relax,” he said. She’d gone back to sit on the couch and his voice came out muffled from the kitchen as he stuck his head into bags, his large hands pawing over the food. “I am going to put some meat on those bones.”
Alexis shuddered at the thought. But no one had ever cooked for her before, and she tried to look on the bright side; she might just get a blog post for
Skinny Chick
out of this. She was stuck on what to write about for tomorrow anyway.
Oh, but who cared? Who cared about Noah and his ears that stuck out adorably from the sides of his head and his big white smile that seemed to X-ray right through her clothes? What the fuck
was
that lump beneath Billy’s arm? She got up and paced up and down, the floorboards creaking underneath her feet. She fiddled with her bandage. She checked her phone three times, hoping Sarah’s husband Aldo would call.
He finally did, just as Noah was setting out two plates, searching around in the drawer for silverware. An amazing smell wafted over to her nose from the kitchen. Their plates, glasses, silverware were all mix-matched, nothing was part of a set. Some had been there when they moved into the apartment, and they eventually got over the initial grossness and used them, and then there were the odd-looking antique plates with horses and carriages on them that belonged to Billy. Vanya contributed some black plastic plates with a pink skull and crossbones on them, which Alexis and Billy were too scared to use, plus once your food was on there it was impossible to see what you were eating.
“Hello, Alexis, this is Dr. Aldo Martinez. Sarah said you wanted to speak with me about a friend of yours?” She heard someone being paged in the background, voices murmuring, telephones ringing.
“Yes, um, it’s Billy. Billy is his name.” Noah peered at her curiously, then sat down on one of the breakfast barstools. He clasped his hands in his lap and waited for her, which she liked. His manners seemed … antiquated somehow.
“And what seems to be the problem?” Aldo’s voice was kind, but she could tell he was busy. Of course, he had other patients. Ones probably who were really sick. Billy probably had mono. Or the flu. She continued with more confidence, but kept her voice down so Billy wouldn’t hear her discussing him.
“He has a lump … under his arm. About the size of a plum. And he says he’s been tired, sluggish. He works nights, so he’s tired a lot, but not like this. And he has blue circles under his eyes, I’m just … I’m worried about him.”
“Yes, I see. Why don’t you tell Billy to come see me in my uptown office today after nine? I’ll be able to give a better diagnosis that way than over the phone.”
She swallowed. She didn’t like that word, “diagnosis.” Did you get diagnosed for mono? She supposed one did. Just last night, she’d been diagnosed with a need for stitches, right? And that turned out to be no big deal.
“Okay, thank you so much, Aldo. I mean, Dr. Martinez. I really appreciate you taking the time to call me back.”
Noah set down a plate of steaming-hot French toast in front of her. She pressed the off button on her phone, then set it slowly down next to her plate. She realized with a strange calmness that if her phone was off she couldn’t input the calories into her app, but the thought swam in and out of her mind like a gentle tide. Absentmindedly, she took a bite. She stared at her fork, then cut off another piece, and ate that, too. Somewhere in the back of her mind alarm bells were going off about her caloric intake, but she was too worried to respond to them.
“Everything okay?” Noah asked, in that deep, calm voice of his. She felt she could listen to him talk all day, every day.