Sunday's on the Phone to Monday (19 page)

For the four of them he ordered grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, a croissant, three bagels, a turkey burger, a hamburger, an omelet with hash browns, a milk shake, and a large hot chocolate with whipped cream from the twenty-four-hour-delivery diner. While waiting for the delivery, they ate some mixed nuts from the glass bowl on the table. LJ brought back cherry and grape Popsicles from the freezer.

My mouth's cold,
said Lucy, looking at a framed picture of LJ's mother, who was attractive in a fancy way: plucked, French Riviera glow, pearls.
I'm so cold. Is there a draft in here?

LJ hugged her, pressing his face into the dip of her neck.
Best friend,
he called her, even though she hardly was. LJ sometimes just said things.
You smell like Mrs. Fields.

Pick a movie,
said Carly.
What's on TV? Anything good? I like nature shows or cartoons when I'm high.

They watched
The Lion King 1
¹
/
₂
, joining each other at different points in sleep, their bodies lying level as sleds on the couches. When Carly woke up, the end credit music was playing, which made her homesick for a moment she wasn't sure occurred. She turned the channel, stopping at an infomercial. Natasha's head, drenched with a waning cuddliness, stayed on Lucy's lap as infomercials on the television about juicers and ab-crunching machines looped. Lucy's beeper sat calmly at a side of the room next to the girls' shoes. Lucy on occasion let loose a static cough.

The TV said,
call now. Time is running out.

Carly clicked again, finding a rerun of
The Nanny
on TV Land, wrapping herself in the pile of fur thrown on the sofa. LJ stirred. He tousled his own soft-as-a-Fair-Isle-sweater hair.

Do you have any cigarettes?
She knew he would because LJ had everything.

Mom's,
said LJ, still with sleep in his voice. He linked his fingers and stretched his hands, a gesture of a forty-year-old.
Be right back.
He left the room, returned minutes later with Marlboro Reds.

These are the worst. Mom really should know better; she's a doctor. Grown-ups and their weird vices. Sorry if you get cancer after smoking one,
said LJ, before realizing what he said.
Sorry.

It's cool,
said Carly. She could take jokes, even bad ones. They were just jokes, after all.
Light?

LJ, very close to her face, smelled like lozenges. A pierce of warmth called attention to her mouth.
Thank you.

Let's go to the kitchen, by the windows. So the smoke won't stick to the floors.

LJ rose and opened the enormous fridge. LJ's family had a state-of-the-art kitchen, existing in the disposable and unsure way that objects belonging to the wealthy did: clothes worn once, technology replaced in a matter of months, renovated walls dotted with paintings by upper-crust contemporary artists. He took out a juice box, punctured it, drank it until his entire mouth turned red. He took the cigarette from her and alternated between smoking and drinking juice, between looking middle-aged and babyish. He started to clean up around the house, stacking the beer and soda cans up in the recycling.

Sometimes I imagine what the world would be like if every boy I knew was a girl and every girl I knew was a boy,
said Carly dazedly.

Right on,
said LJ. LJ, who was so nice and enthusiastic for people, sometimes irritatingly so, because people who supported everything meant nothing.

LJ turned the channel to one that played only music, to “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
,
” by the Smiths. LJ stared at Lucy in the next room.
She's really something, isn't she?

She sure is.

Can I tell you something?

I guess,
said Carly.

I'm kind of thinking about giving her my mom's diamond hoops.

Whoa, really? Why?

Just that I want something of mine to be with her. Forever.

That's kind of a tangled idea.

How?

I mean it's pretty aggressive. Or uh, I guess, romantic?
What was that Carly was feeling? Jealousy? She squeezed her own spartan, unpierced left lobe.

Before she got sick, I never cared about her this much. I always just thought she'd be there. Of course she would. Lucy who lives down the street. Why wouldn't she not be around, always?

Please shut the fuck up,
hissed Carly. She conjured an image of girls who used to make fun of Lucy's hair and outrageous
clothes in middle school at Lucy's future funeral, calling her sweet and kind. They were already starting to call her that. The closer Lucy came to dying, the more people would love her.

LJ turned plum, startled.
Huh?

This is a terrible conversation.

How do people fall in love? Is it a matter of circumstance? Did LJ really love her sister, or was he just romanticizing her infirmity? Was he bold enough to admit he loved her only because he assumed that she was going to die soon? And would anyone ever be bold enough to admit he loved Carly in a romantic way?

Carly thought about Stephen and how he'd seemed to her that afternoon. They'd kissed and touched like new athletic hobbyists: unsure. Did she love Stephen? And if she did, why? In a reverie? Because he was there? Because he sat with her that one afternoon and didn't say anything?
He's just a friend. It doesn't mean anything,
she had told her sisters. Of course it meant something.

She still hadn't told either of her sisters about what had happened, her and Stephen's weird alchemy, their fragile ballet. And yet she loved Lucy and Natasha, more than anyone, much more than she loved Stephen. Her uncle Sawyer always used to say,
you can't choose the family you're born into. You have to love them.
Carly didn't love the family she was originally born into. She didn't even know the people who made love and made her, what spices they cooked with or what bank they went to or if they believed in destiny or why they gave her to somebody else. She was only three days old when the Simone family chose her.

How are you feeling?
LJ asked her.

Me? I'm fine. And you?

A little bored,
he said. He reached out and poked her shoulder with his index.
- He's lucky, -
Carly thought. Flirting techniques came easy to LJ and would get him far with people.

Bored?
she asked. It seemed like such a selfish emotion, if it was even an emotion.

Can you think of anything you want to do?
asked LJ.

Carly blushed. -
Eat? Go for a walk? Look through your parents' medicine cabinets? -

We can play Hot Seat.

What's that?

Like truth or dare, but no dare. We ask each other questions. We have to answer honestly.

I guess,
said Carly.
But what if we aren't honest?

That's not the point. This is a game about trustworthiness.

Sure, let's play.

You go first,
declared LJ.
Ask me anything.

Okay,
said Carly.
What are you looking forward to most in college?

Um. I want to start an a capella rap group called Tone Thugz and Harmony.

Okay, but really,
said Carly. Just like him to give counterproductive information. That's all jokes were: impossible answers. She stared at LJ's wall-size fresh and saltwater tanks, with actual didactic panels besides them listing the species inside, in case the family forgot who they were. Koi. Rosy barbs. Fancy guppies. Ghost catfishes. They were moving paintings.

Okay. I want to learn how to work really hard,
said LJ.
High school has been too easy for me. Yeah, my life is busy with meets and homework and SAT prep, but it's nothing I can't handle. I want something I can't handle, does that make sense? I want to know what it's like to really want something.

So people don't think you're a jerk?
asked Carly.

I just think it's depressing when you get what you want after trying very little.

Then it was LJ's turn.
What's your least favorite thing about yourself?

I feel homesick way too much. Sometimes even for the length of the school day.

That's really sweet. It sounds more like a best quality than a worst quality to me.

Well,
said Carly,
sometimes our gifts undermine us.

Oh!
LJ bit his knuckle.
I have another one. Can I ask you real quick? Then you can go. Before I forget. What possession would you keep in your life if everything else got destroyed?

Uh, this picture I took with my sisters on the first day we took the train into the city alone. We ate lunch at this burger place in Chelsea. Natasha and I got hamburgers, but Lucy decided to order sushi for some reason. Lunch lasted for almost three hours. We saw the guy from
The Princess Bride
who says
inconceivable
crossing the street. We took a picture on the ice. Lucy has both eyes closed. Like she's sneezing. And I'm looking in the wrong direction, not at the camera but at my sisters. I really like that picture. We don't look like we're posing for a picture. We just look like ourselves. On my perfect day, that day in the city, we went to the Central Park Zoo after lunch. At the zoo, the parrot asked us,
how are you?
and the panda wasn't a panda bear. We'd all forgotten there were other types of pandas. What about you? What would you keep?

LJ held up his wrist, showing Carly a twenty-four-hour gold timepiece he'd snapped on as soon as they dried off.
From my grandpa. I hate that I can't wear it underwater. I don't like not knowing the time.

That's funny,
said Carly,
I feel the opposite.

About water?

About time.

Oh. Why?

I don't know. It has no mercy, time.

I
have to tell you something,
Claudio said to his wife.

What's that?
asked Mathilde.

And that something was that he'd been at a strip club some towns over, in the frailer Copiague, earlier in the night. Nothing drove him but the wickedness of an itch. He set his watch timer for ten minutes. He never thought he would ever come here, but he felt itchy. What frightened Claudio was that maybe this tingle was merely a type of desperate boredom.

The place had been tame. There was a table with three aluminum catering tins of baked ziti, but no blue fires underneath the food. Claudio resisted the urge to light the tins. A woman caught his eye.

Hi, how are you?
The woman wore heels. She was very pretty. Mathilde was milk-and-honey beautiful, and this woman was another kind of beautiful. A more vulgar beautiful, with the bones in her cheeks like a Russian czar's. She made his stomach ache.

That's one hell of a pair of shoes,
said Claudio. Flan-blond highlights and big brown eyes. She had a little birthmark on her left ribs the size and shape of a Froot Loop. Claudio had always loved large breasts. But then again, who didn't? He imagined taking her to a hotel and fucking his pain out. It was a similar urge to the one that plagued him at banks or restaurants.
Order
everything on the menu. Empty my vault. Tip everyone I see.
This transferable romance was drastically different from the high he felt at concerts, which came with no strings, no chance for regret.

The stripper raised a shot glass and toasted him. Drinking on the job seemed encouraged. Claudio wondered what could get you fired here.
I think I'm getting a little too old for this kind of thing,
he confided.

It was Claudio's first time at a strip club, never having even been to a bachelor party. Back when Claudio had been a bachelor, all he cared about was obtaining money for his freedom. The only time he'd ever even thought about strip clubs came with an assortment of associations with areas consisting of 99¢ stores and pawnshops and gas stations with bulletproof-glass-covered teller stands. Towns that virtually ran on fast food, with closed-down, burglarized grocery stores. Skeleton houses.

- What circumstances made sex a transaction?
- he thought, though he already knew the answer: circumstances without love. Lately he'd been speculative of all indigent parts of life. Sawyer was a sucker for beauty; well, Claudio could have been a sucker for ugliness. Not that it appealed to him, just that sometimes it was easy to find the beauty in such ugliness, even easier than it was to see the discreet ugliness in opulence and privilege. Sure, there had to be upscale strip clubs too, but he guessed they weren't nearly as interesting. As he thought this, Claudio felt shame at his condescension, the sexiness he found in desperation. Then again, Claudio knew a thing or two about desperation.

Claudio stood and wondered
. - Could a past possibly excuse a journalistic lens? -

The last time Claudio had gone back to Detroit was the year his parents died. He had refused to let Mathilde or his daughters come with him. Both of his parents had died within months of each other, when Claudio turned forty. Within two months, he
took two plane trips. Two trips to the morgue to identify the two people who'd made him.

No services, besides Claudio standing in the cemetery, listening to a Catholic priest (belonging to a local church he looked up online) pray prayers he hadn't heard since his childhood. If his parents had kept any friends since he'd moved away, Claudio didn't know where to find them. He figured they'd at least have wanted a priest, right?