Authors: Sarah Langan
Jayne’s apartment was brighter, but not by much. It faced north and gave a view of Columbia University’s Miller Library. The air was just as oppressive, though, and the place reeked of cigarette smoke, too. The master-bedroom door was open, and she saw that the white sheets and satin, hot pink comforter were unmade. A foam mattress sealed in what looked like a rubber sheet peeked out from under the pink…Was Jayne a bed wetter, too?
In the spare bedroom were stacks of magazines arranged into piles
(Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, Variety, Star, OK!, People).
There wasn’t any furniture save a pink Pier I satellite chair—small and cumbersome,
as if made for a little girl rather than a grown woman. In the kitchen were more ashtrays, all full. She’d smoked the butts down to the filter, not a speck left of white. A beach shell full of Winstons lay half-submerged in gray, ashy water at the bottom of the kitchen sink. Apparently, Jayne didn’t have many guests, either.
The wine and a couple of clean glasses were on the counter, along with a thin line of red ants that crawled up through a crack in the backsplash. She smooshed them with her fingers, then picked up what she needed, and surveyed the apartment. Except for Saraub and Betty, she’d never been inside someone’s apartment by herself. It was nice to be trusted this way. Then she remembered that right now Jayne was alone in 14B, maybe peeking in closets (the door!), so she hurried along, and searched for a bottle opener. She found it clipped to the old GE refrigerator by the
Sex and the City
magnetic poetry
(Cock-a-Doodle-Dooo! 30 is the new twenty! Mine is bigger than yours!).
Also on the GE were about ten photos of redheads ranging in age from infant to octogenarian. Related, clearly. Blue eyes and fair skin. A huge family of cousins aunts, uncles, parents, and siblings. There was also a single, recurring brunette in every photo. She stood back from the others and did not smile. Audrey pulled the “Cock-a-doodle” magnet, and lifted an overexposed Technicolor that looked like it had been snapped in the 1980s. Jayne. The brunette’s small features looked mouselike rather than delicate, and she squinted at the camera, a duck among swans. “Jayne, sweet Jayne,” Audrey clucked, then replaced the photo. No wonder she dyed her hair red.
Before she left, Audrey quickly sponged the counters clean of ants, crumbs, dried coffee, and ashes. She’d never been good at explaining it, especially not to her freshman college roommate, who’d kicked her out after
a month, but straightening things for the people she cared about was her way of protecting them. When everything was in its proper place, there wasn’t room for bad stuff to creep through.
She reached 14B with the bottle just as the intercom buzzed, and Chinese food arrived. Jayne was sitting quietly when she returned. She seemed calmer than when they’d met in the hall a half hour ago. Maybe making friends was hard for her, too.
They dug in. Her General Tsao’s was mostly beef grease and MSG, but it did the job and plugged the hole in her grumbling stomach. She finished half the container without looking up.
To her left, Jayne puckered her nose at the green beans but didn’t eat them, then slugged the wine. “Can I have some of yours?” she asked.
“Trade,” Audrey said, and they exchanged cartons.
“Want to watch TV?” Audrey asked after a while. She felt like she was on a date. What do two women do together when they’re alone? She shouldn’t have paid for dinner. Now Jayne had probably gotten the wrong impression, and decided they were going to become lady lesbians.
“Not unless you do. I watched it all day. Luke and Laura are fossilized now.
General Hospital
with mummies. I used to sneak the soaps when I was a kid because that kind of thing wasn’t allowed where I come from—I’m Mormon. Now I’m thinking of suing ABC for making me stupid. Either that, or Bumble Bee tuna fish. My mom ate it when she was pregnant with me, and I think the mercury gave me brain damage.”
“Oh.” Audrey had never seen a soap opera, except the Spanish ones at the Laundromat on Amsterdam
Avenue. Lots of close-ups of lone tears streaming down maudlin cheeks. Out the window, the Parkside Plaza was the only building in the 59
th
Street row whose top lights were dark. The scaffolding only went to the forty-fifth floor, and not all the debris had been cleared. For months after the bombing, people had found human bones strewn all over the block.
“…I had to give a presentation today,” Audrey said.
Jayne beamed. Her pockmarks were more evident near her smile, where the blood drained and her skin went taut. “You did? What happened?”
“I kind of freaked out at first. I saw something…But then it was okay. Everybody liked it. Even my horrible boss, who was supposed to be the one to give it.”
Jayne clicked her glass against Audrey’s. “Hooray, Audrey! Boo, hiss, bad boss!”
Audrey lifted her glass and took a sip. “Thanks,” she said. She suddenly felt warm, and happy. She’d been very lonely this last month, and because of that she’d acted more squirrelly than usual. Funny, but she only realized that now, after lunch with the boys, and now dinner with Jayne, when she wasn’t lonely anymore. “The thing I saw…Did you say you were having trouble sleep—”
Jayne cut her off. “You know what my problem is? I’m needy. I’ll call, like five times in a day. It’s crazy. I can’t help myself. I know how it looks to a guy. I’m this hyperlunatic with wrinkles and a bad job, but I can’t help it.”
“Oh, you’re all right,” Audrey said.
“I’m skinny at least. That’s important. Not as skinny as you, but skinny.”
Audrey looked at herself. Jayne was right. If she wanted, she could pull her skirt down over her butt without unzipping it. The result wasn’t flattering. In the
mirror at work today, her face had seemed gaunt and her eyes sunken unrecognizably deep: she’d looked old. “Have you gone on any dates lately?” Audrey asked. Something told her the answer was yes, and that they’d been a train wreck.
Jayne bit the sides of her cheeks and rolled both eyes. “A few losers. There’s this one guy I like. He’s kind of a senior if you know what I mean. That’s not so terrible is it? Do you think it’s terrible?”
Audrey shrugged. “Depends. Does he wear Depends?”
Jayne clapped her hands together in delight at the very thought of him. “Probably. He’s so old! But he’s good to me. I’m being superstitious this time and not talking about him until I’m sure…Wait! What’s your man problem? Don’t you have one, too?” Jayne asked. She slurped as she drank, even though the wine was in a glass. Not an easy task.
Audrey thought about the fight last night, and her time at the Golden Nugget, and the years she’d known Saraub before that. She summed them up. “I’m a jerk,” she said. “But he’s no saint.”
“Commitment?” Jayne asked.
“How did you know?”
Jayne nodded. “Because in a breakup, somebody’s always the jerk, and somebody else is always needy. I’d rather be on your side than mine.”
“Naw. It sounds like the better side, but it’s not.”
“Yeah, but I’m like the walking wounded over here. My bruises have bruises,” Jayne quipped. The joke fell flat because it was so clearly true.
“Yeah, but people like you will wind up with somebody, because you’re open. You’re out there taking risks,” Audrey said. Then she looked down at her coffee-stained shirt. Her hands were poised over her lap, the exact distance apart. Perfectly even. Next to her, Jayne was slumped in her chair, limbs akimbo,
her teeth stained red with wine. It dawned on her that while Jayne would probably break free of this strange, lonely, single-woman existence in New York, she would not, because she was on the wrong side of the fight. She was the jerk.
She reached into her pockets for consolation and was alarmed to find nothing there. The ring! She took it everywhere. Not once since he’d given it to her had she let it out of her sight. So where was it? Still in yesterday’s pants? She tried to sit still, but the compulsion overcame her. She hurried to the double closet, exposed the half-built door, then bent down and pulled yesterday’s trousers free from the towel she’d wrapped them in. A sharp thing inside their damp, ammonia pockets cut her knuckle. She grabbed it hard, and tucked it inside her skirt pocket like a secret. When she returned to Jayne, she was crying. Little sniffles and hitches in this cavernous, terrifying apartment. “I screwed up,” she said.
Jayne scooted in her chair
(Screetch! Screetch! Jiggle!),
then leaned over and rubbed Audrey’s back with the heel of her hand. The gesture was comforting enough to allow her to release and cry harder.
“I screw up, like, twice a day. My dad says I’m a bigger disappointment than his dog, which is dead, by the way. A dead pit bull named Pudge, and I’m the disappointment.”
Audrey laughed a little, while still crying.
“Everybody screws up unless they’re boring,” Jayne said.
“Have you ever screwed up, and it was because you loved them so much?” Audrey asked.
Jayne leaned to the other side of her chair, reached down, and took a quick slug of wine. Then she returned. “No man wants to get to know me that well unless he’s related. I never get that far.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’m not jealous,” Jayne said. “Everybody’s different. I gave up jealous a long time ago because I’m not good at anything except comedy.”
“That’s not true,” Audrey said.
Jayne shrugged. “I sound like a Sad Sally, don’t I? Who cares. How did you screw up?”
Audrey sniffled. “He proposed, and I said yes. But then I got scared, because I have this problem, we both have problems, so I said no, and I moved out,” she explained.
“The OCD?”
Audrey heaved her breath one last time, then brought herself under control. “I guess. I’m coming unhinged lately. This apartment—I might really be crazy.”
“That’s too bad,” Jayne said. Then she leaned to her side, refilled both glasses, and handed one to Audrey. The act was natural, and Audrey wondered if it came from growing up surrounded by family.
“I hope you don’t mind that we just met, and I’m telling you my problems,” she said.
Jayne shrugged. “I’m in the market for more friends. Eight brothers and sisters, and I’m the only one still single. Oh, hey! I know what’ll cheer you up! A game!” Jayne leaned back and scratched her knee. It was a real raspberry of hurt: her fingers came away glistening red.
Without thinking about it, Audrey folded a take-out napkin to its clean side, and handed it to her. “Stop picking at yourself,” she said.
Jayne nodded, like she’d heard the line a thousand times before, and it no longer registered. She dabbed the napkin against the broken clot. “What’s the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?” she asked.
Audrey shook her head. “Thinking about something like that does not make me feel better Jayne, just so you know.”
“It will. It always works. Trust me. Normally I’d
throw out some stock bullshit for a laugh, but I’ll give you something real. I’ll give you my tenth most embarrassing thing.” She leaned back, and giggled. The sound was pure delight.
“Tenth? You count?”
Her reply was serious. “It’s very important, the stuff you find shameful. Funny should come close to hurting, or it’s just slapstick. I’ve studied funny.” The lights of the city reflected in her green eyes and she stretched out the silence to make sure she had Audrey’s full attention. Showmanship. It made Audrey curious about her act.
“Okay,” Jayne finally said. “This happened a lifetime ago. I’d just run away to New York, and I was going crazy because it was so free, and different from Salt Lake. My hair was purple, if you can picture that. Superpunk. I was waiting tables at the old Howard Johnson on Broadway, and living in that girls’ dormitory on the Upper West Side. I used to walk the city and watch people when I had time off. I’d look at them and think, they don’t know, but one day I’ll be famous.”
“Anyway, I was a real baby face, so I had to use a fake ID to get into the comedy clubs. The laminated kind you used to buy in Times Square that said, ‘OFFICIAL IDENTIFICATION CARD’—you probably don’t remember them, but they were about as real as three-dollar bills. Anyway, this one night I went to Caroline’s Comedy Club, and met this guy who’d been on
Letterman.
Twice! It was like talking to a famous person. So I went home with him.”
Audrey sat up, shocked. “How old were you?”
Jayne smiled like a sphinx. “Fifteen.”
Audrey paled. She had a hard time imagining being in this city at such a tender age. The metaphor it brought to mind was: lamb for slaughter.
Jayne continued. “Anyway, the guy took me to this rent-controlled palace on the Upper West Side. He’d grown up in New York, so he inherited it. That’s how
those people get trapped. Same with the folks who live in The Breviary. They inherit, and then they never have to work real jobs, so they forget how. They don’t even have any kids. They’re the last of their lines. We ought to get in good with them. We could inherit the whole building! Anyway, he gave me a few drinks—screwdrivers, maybe? After that, he showed me how to blow coke up his ass, and then he did it for me. Best high of my life.”
Audrey shook her head back and forth. “That’s really gross.”
Jayne nodded. “Especially when you’re allergic, because your colon spazzes. I pooped his bed. Then I was so embarrassed I ran out. Never even gave him my number. Maybe he’s my soul mate, but I had to leave because I pooped the bed. Fancy slate gray sheets, I’ll never forget.”
The seconds passed. Audrey didn’t know what to say. Was she supposed to console Jayne? Was this some kind of test? What a terrible story! Worse, it was rehearsed. She’d told it before! Finally, Audrey couldn’t help it. Laughter burst, then roared from her chest. “No…no way,” she said between breaths.
“Way,” Jayne said, laughing, too.
“Couldn’t you have made it to the toilet?” tears came to the corners of her eyes.
“No,” Jayne said. Now she was laughing really hard. “Huuh. Huuuh. I thought I was all sexy, and then…” Her face got splotchy, apple red. “It fell right out! Too late to do anything but run.”