Authors: Kate Rockland
At four-thirty Monday morning, Alexis’s alarm clock sprang awake to the sound of her roommate Billy’s very loud and mechanically recorded voice: “Aleeeexiiis, it’s me, Billy. You are sleeping, but it’s time to wakey-wakey. I know you want to lie around in bed for another two hours, but you know who lies in bed, don’t you?”
“Fat girls,” Alexis murmured, half asleep. Laid across her throbbing eyelids was a pink eye cover filled with frozen gel; she’d had two appletinis last night and felt sluggish. But at only fifteen calories a pop she’d been able to enjoy them sans guilt, somewhat. She and Billy had gone to Eastern Bloc in the Village (where Billy worked part-time) and then hopped in a cab with two sailors who were in town for Fleet Week, and made their way home to Nineteenth Street, where they lived above the Container Store.
“Fat girls!” Billy screeched, his gleeful voice filling her bedroom and bouncing off the walls, which were dark with the last gasp of night, save for the yellow slant of streetlamp cutting diagonally across the dark wall next to her queen-sized modern bed.
She fumbled around for the snooze button, then remembered she’d purposely bought the only alarm clock without that feature. She tried reaching under her headboard for the plug, only to let out a long sigh. It was solar-powered. Alexis wrestled her alarm clock on a daily basis. Oh, but Billy’s nasally voice was still assaulting her.
“If you want to keep that fabulous figure, it’s time to get out of bed and head to the gym. Only…”
Alexis mouthed the words along with Billy, her face once again smushed against her pillow.
“… don’t wake
my
pretty ass up!”
It always made her smile, that last part. It was true. Billy didn’t get home from Eastern Bloc most nights until the sun was rising. They’d become best friends their freshman year at Columbia and been inseparable ever since, living together since graduation five years ago.
Fumbling around in the dark, she found her five-pound weights and strapped them around both ankles, the loud
zip
of Velcro sounding violent in the stillness of the morning. She’d done the best she could to give her bedroom character and neat, modern sleekness on a writer’s salary: large black-and-white posters with Hitchcock movie stills (she and Billy loved his movies) took up three of the four walls. She’d painted her radiator a pretty white color. A large, chunky white chandelier she’d bought on super sale at ABC Carpet hung over her bed. The strands of crystals woven through its arms would sometimes break off, and Alexis would find one on her pillow, shining like a diamond. She had a dark gray shag rug that she vacuumed daily, and a small, sleek IKEA desk over by her window at which she wrote, tiny clear Lucite bins holding her assorted paper clips and pens. Her room was spotless and organized.
She felt her calf muscles working under the weights as she shuffled to the bathroom, yawning, and turned on the small light over the shower and plucked her pink Dora the Explorer toothbrush out of the glass. As a joke, Billy bought Dora for her and a blue Diego brush for himself.
Princess Pinkerton, the gray-and-white-striped cat Billy had found in the back alley of his bar and brought home last December wrapped in his brown Marc Jacobs leather bomber jacket, was squatting and shitting in the large potted jade tree just inside the bathroom, next to the toilet.
“Get out of there!” Alexis hissed. The cat was perched on the edge of the pot. Alexis and Billy were trying to break her of this habit. Billy even recently put in a call to a cat behaviorist in Portland, Oregon, who suggested they fly her out for a group therapy session with other neurotic cats, something they obviously couldn’t afford on bartender and blogger salaries.
“But it’s the
cat
whisperer, Alexis,” Billy had protested. “He’s going to be the next big reality pet star. And Princess Pinkerton could be famous!”
She’d shaken her head. Sometimes Billy’s optimism could be overwhelming. Alexis might be a pessimist, but she liked to think of herself as a realist.
She finished brushing her teeth, and shuffled into the kitchen to find a man standing in her kitchen.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
He jumped about a mile. Naked from the waist up, he wore blue boxers with oversized white polka dots. He was drinking a glass of water, some of which he’d spilled onto his chiseled chest. And yes, a dark blue inked tattoo of an anchor was on his sculpted, muscular bicep. Alexis squinted at him; he looked familiar. And wow, didn’t Billy have all the luck, getting laid by a guy this hot. She could pour maple syrup on him and eat him for breakfast. If only it didn’t have so many calories.
She realized she’d spoken her thoughts.
“Er, thanks,” he said, looking embarrassed.
“Oh! I didn’t realize I said that out loud,” she said. “Rough night and all that. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make my breakfast.”
“Sure, of course. Go right ahead.” The sailor moved over an inch.
Right. He was one of the sailors they’d been drinking with the night before. Fancy meeting him in her kitchen. Her stomach growled. Alexis grabbed a banana from the hammered-metal fruit bowl next to the sink and diced it exactly seven times. She always sliced it seven times. Then she poured herself a glass of nonfat milk, holding up her fist to measure the amount. Last, she walked over to her purse, which was thrown over the back of a kitchen chair, opened it, took out her iPhone, and tapped the app that helped her track her daily caloric intake.
“You got some kind of OCD or something?” the sailor asked, watching her.
Alexis sighed. She’d been explaining her dietary restrictions and careful eating habits since she’d formed the Healthy Vikings in her small, private Catholic school. She’d been the president, of course. It had three members, girls on Alexis’s cheerleading squad who were too scared of her to turn her down when she set about recruiting. She’d been popular in an eerie way—passing judgments that cut too close to the bone to be ignored, splitting up couples she thought shouldn’t be dating in the first place with nasty gossip. Alexis was popular in school because her father donated a million dollars so it could be one of the first in Greenwich, Connecticut, to give each kid his or her own laptop, and because she was a member of nearly every club the school offered. It was simply better to be with her than against her, like the Mob. She was a hard worker and excelled in every subject equally.
When one teacher, an Arkansas transplant and sweet young woman, grew worried that Alexis might indeed be quite lonely during freshman year despite all her extracurricular activities, she called a meeting with Alexis’s parents and presented her case. Her father’s response? “I donated money to this school to be called out of court for
this
? Every kid gets sad sometimes. It builds character. Talking about feelings is a bunch of new age horseshit, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
He’d spun on his Gucci loafer and left, her mother looking out the window with a pained expression, wanting to be anywhere else, wearing ridiculous white driving gloves. Alexis’s older brother (by exactly three years to the day, they shared a birthday) Mark caught wind of the whole ordeal, and wrestled Alexis into a headlock in the school’s hallway as he walked to football practice the next afternoon. He’d be dead the following year, killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, but she didn’t know that yet. That day he looked very much alive as a hive of activity buzzed around him: student council signs swinging from nearby lockers, the squeaking of their sneakers as they walked, classroom doors opening and students pouring out in waves, the dimple in his right cheek creasing as he smiled down at her, the shouting of jokes and insults by his teammates as they ran ahead of him, football helmets cradled in strong, muscular young arms like soldiers with rifles. She could smell his brand of deodorant and the peanut butter energy bar he’d just devoured.
“Hey, little sis.”
“Hi, Mark.”
“You’re not too old for a noogie, right? Say the magic words and I’ll let you go.”
She giggled, punching him lightly in the stomach as he let go of his grip around her head and put his arm around her shoulders instead.
“Goonies say, never die!” They both loved
The Goonies.
Sloth was Mark’s favorite character.
She felt something knotted within her simply … relax. He had that effect on her, as he did on everyone else, too. “You know I love you, don’t you?” he said quietly into her ear, so as not to allow people walking by to witness any of their private exchange.
Her eyes welled up, but she looked away toward a nearby green locker that had the initials
KG + JG
scratched on it. She didn’t know them. “Yes,” she’d whispered back.
And that had been the end of that.
But now she was late for the gym. Her phone emitted a sharp
bleet,
as Alexis quickly downed the glass of milk like a shot. She had another app that reminded her when she was running behind for her workout. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a blur of motion as sailor boy reached out and helped himself to a slice of her banana.
Alexis sucked in air and let out a small scream.
Sailor boy’s arm dropped to his side, the banana still mashed into his cheek, making him look like a chipmunk.
Billy came rushing out of his bedroom. “What is it? What’s the matter?” He glanced at the clock on the stove. “It’s five-oh-four. Why aren’t you at the gym?” Billy was Korean, had black spiky hair and smooth, caramel-colored skin. His eyes were large and black, framed by beautifully long lashes that were his best feature (which he’d tell everyone who would listen). He was the same height as Alexis, five-foot-two.
Two eyes peered out of the darkness from Billy’s room at Alexis. She realized it was the other sailor from last night. Tom, or Tim. Or maybe it was Tony? She couldn’t remember.
“Sailor boy over here thought it might be okay to take one of my banana slices,” Alexis said.
Polka-dot Boxers Sailor let out an embarrassed chuckle. Alexis realized he sounded embarrassed for
her
. The nerve.
“What’s with your roommate?” he asked Billy. “She got a stick up her ass or something? I ate a slice of banana, and she screamed like I was stabbing her in the eye.”
Billy strode slowly but meaningfully over to him. He came up to the sailor’s nipple.
Pause.
He reached up and slapped him across the face.
The sailor stood there, his hand on his cheek, wearing a shocked expression. Alexis heard Billy’s other boy toy scurry back into the shadows, quickly slamming the door. The sound of the lock being turned echoed across the tiles in the kitchenette.
“What the fuck was that for?” Polka-dot Boxers Sailor asked.
“I’m going to explain something to you, so open up your big dumb waterlogged ears,” Billy said, hands on his narrow hips. “Do you have any idea who you just took a slice of banana from? Whose breakfast you so cavalierly interrupted? Motherfucker, this is Alexis Allbright. Editor in chief of
Skinny Chick.
Queen of Chelsea. Bitch of all bitches.”
“The blog?” the sailor asked, lifting his thick eyebrows at this news.
“
The blog,
” Billy replied.
“Oh, my god,” he said, putting a hand up to his reddening cheek. “I read your blog, like, every single day. I fucking worship you. I used to be a fat kid when I was younger.” He pointed to his washboard abs. “Really.”
Alexis smiled the wafer-thin smile she reserved for people she didn’t like.
“That interview you did with Anna Wintour I read like five hundred times on my laptop when we were stationed off the coast of Mexico. It got me through the lonely nights.”
“Glad I can do my part for my country,” Alexis said. She was starting to calm down.
“
Now
do you understand why taking her banana slice was so disrespectful?” Billy asked, his tone that of a preschool teacher speaking to a very small child. “Girlfriend isn’t going to eat anything for another five hours, as you know from her blog. And when she
does
eat, it will be a meal consisting of fewer calories than you have brain cells. And she has to now go work out. While the rest of the world sleeps in their lazy little beds.”
The sailor was tripping over himself to apologize. Alexis let him off the hook with a wave of her French-manicured hand. She never got anything other than a “Frenchie,” as she called them. Her mother had always said color on fingernails looked vulgar.
“Don’t worry about it, honey,” she told him. “If you can say
Skinny Chick
’s motto to me, all is forgiven.”
The sailor grinned. Now he was on familiar ground. “A few calories a day keep the spandex away,” he sang.
“Good boy,” Billy said, patting him on the butt like a dog. The sailor went skipping off to the bathroom, glowing as if he’d just met Angelina Jolie.
Suddenly a second door opened and a dark mane of hair appeared. Alexis and Billy both sucked in their breath at the same time. “All right out ’ere?” a voice called spookily in an indeterminate accent. It seemed to warble, or echo somehow, like a ghost wailing inside a haunted house.
“Er … everything’s fine. Sorry we woke you,” Billy whispered.
Their third roommate was the only person on the entire planet who truly scared the shit out of both of them. Not having any friends, they’d had to rent out the third bedroom in their apartment when Alexis quit law school to start her blog. Billy was between bartending jobs at the time, and they needed the money. God knows, she’d rather take in Hannibal Lecter before going to her father for money, after he’d told her she was “dead to me” when she dropped out.
So when Vanya answered their Craigslist ad, and had the deposit ready, they’d accepted her on the spot.