The Parallel Apartments (34 page)

Justine shook her head.

“Want to go to the police?”

Gracie looked over her shoulder toward the apartment complex. Time and heat bore down on Justine.

“My grandmother died.”

“Oh, Justine, I'm sorry.”

“And—”
my adoptive mother kissed her own daddy, my granddaddy, hard, with lust
“—I got fired.”

“Oh no.”

“And Troy broke up with me.”

“Oh, Justine,” she said, touching Justine's shoulder while looking in the rearview mirror. “That's a rotten day. Come on, let me take you home.”

“No. Please.”

“Okay, Justine. But look. I'm going to run up to tell Curren I've got work, then I'll come back and drive us through someplace and get some food—”

“Don't leave.”

“—and then we're going over to Old Navy and get you a new outfit. You're filthy. You don't even have any underwear.”

Justine, wide-eyed, stared at Gracie.

“I saw up your skirt when you were climbing down the tree. Sorry.”

When tears were impossible, or when they were simply overtaken by higher-dimension emotions that needed fuller expression, Justine's body would begin to involuntarily undulate along her spine, shallowly at first, then the peaks and valleys deepening, an emotional petit mal.

“Justine. Look at me. Were you raped?”

She shook her head.

“Okay. Good. Lemme go talk with Curren.”

“Can I stay with you?”

“At my place? I wish you could, but it's just not possible.”

My place.

“Can I just stay right here, in the car with you, Ms. Yin?”

“I asked you to call me Gracie,” she said, checking the rearview again. “Shit.”

Justine looked back. A tall man, tanned to the color of iron ore, long brown hair parted on the side, wearing a pink Oxford shirt unbuttoned to the solar plexus, khaki shorts, and dusty, unlaced docksiders, was heading toward the car with his head tilted a few degrees as if trying to get a fuller understanding of the betrayal in progress a few yards before him.

“Is that—”

“Shit, Justine.”

“I—”

Gracie reached down to the side of her seat, feeling about for something. She gave up, cursed, kicked off her suede heels, then straightened her body out as much as she could in the cramped seat, lifted up her skirt to reveal, beneath her pantyhose, pale-blue satin underwear. She hooked her thumbs under the waistband and began to pull the hose and panties down, but had to stop when her thighs came up against the steering wheel. She sat back down, felt under the dashboard, pulled a lever, and lifted up the steering wheel until it locked into place at a higher angle. She straightened out her body again, pulled her panties and hose over her knees and feet, and then thrust them at Justine.

“Here,” she said, rapidly smoothing out her skirt and pulling her shoes back on with her pinkie. “I don't know why, but I'd feel a lot better, Justine, if you had some fucking underwear. Hide it.”

Justine wadded up the fabric into a spongy ball and stuffed it into her backpack just as Curren, smiling, appeared at her window.

“Roll it down,” said Gracie, her head falling back on the hard, cracked vinyl headrest.

“Hi,” said Curren, his breath smelling of tequila and Frito pie. “Who's this?”

“This is one of my guidance students. Justine? I was telling you about her?”

“Oh, yeah, we chatted earlier,” said Curren, pleasantly. “How you doing?”

“Fine,” said Justine, feeling as though she were trapped in a clear trash bag being shrunk by the heat of Curren's breath.

“She declared her love for you, you know,” he said.

Justine couldn't tell whom he was talking to. Or about.

“I was just on my way up to tell you I've gotta run her home and then go catch up on some stuff,” said Gracie. “But I'll be back lickity.”

“You're going to have to find your way home, um, Justine,” said Curren, sticking his head partway in the window, enabling Justine to see the tiny engraving on one stem of his sunglasses: Ray-Ban. “And Gracie? Come.”

Curren withdrew his head, stepped back, and clapped twice, as though to call a ballplayer off the field and back onto the bench in a hopeless game.

“She's in some distress, Cur.”

“It's Cuervo time.” He clapped again.

“I can't leave her alone right now.”

“Why can't you leave your work at work? Put the car in park, give her a dollar bus fare, then come inside and help me crush ice. Your fucking blender can't handle
ice.
It stalls. It makes the lights dim.”

“Couple minutes?”

“You were supposed to be back two and a quarter hours ago.”

“C'mon, Cur. I had the dentist today. I'm pretty sure I told you.”

“Didn't.”

The argument was civil, but its rises and syllable-punching were now picking up and volleying across Justine's forehead.

“Look, this is my
job,
Curren. I'll be back.”

“Roll up the window, Justine,” said Gracie quietly, putting on her seat belt.

Justine looked at her, the mixture of relief and panic and hesitation like grapefruit juice under her tongue.

“Go on, honey,” said Gracie.

Justine began to crank as fast as she could. Gracie turned on the air. Curren ran up and smacked his palms on the edge of the rising plate of glass. Justine cranked harder; the glass rose a quarter inch, then another. Curren readjusted, shifting his entire weight to his hands on the edge of the glass. The right side of the car sank on its old struts. Something snapped, loud, like a breaking tightrope, and the plate of glass fell down inside the door. Justine screamed. Gracie gasped. Curren cried out and jumped back, losing his sunglasses, then looked closely at his hands. Then he rubbed them together and ran his fingers through his hair. He was shaking.

“Fuck
this,
Gracie.”

“Come on, let's drive away,” said Justine.

“Are you okay?” said Gracie; again Justine wasn't sure who was being addressed.

“We,” said Curren, picking his sunglasses off the pavement, “are back to square one, Gracie. It's Halloween all over again.”

“Oh, please don't say that,” said Gracie, no longer reasonable, no longer in control.

“Go wherever you want now. Do whatever. Maybe we'll pick up again someday.”

“No, Curren. C'mon.”

“Go. Take her and do whatever you
want
with her.”

“I can't go
through
that again.”

“Too late.”

Curren turned around as though to head back to the apartment building, but stayed in place.

“No.”

Gracie turned to Justine and looked at her as though in famine. Justine returned her look; they both silently, brittlely beseeched the other:
Don't leave, let me leave, don't leave, let me leave.

Justine shut her eyes for a moment, then opened them. She smiled at Gracie. Gracie peeled off her seat belt, opened her door, and yelled, “Curren, I'm coming, wait!” then she reached back and pulled six five-dollar bills out of her purse and put them in Justine's hand.

“Justine. You'll be okay, I know it. Take a cab home, or to that Sherpa's. I know there's someone out there who can help right now.”

“What did he mean by Halloween?”

“Nothing. It's okay. Curren has to be my priority at the moment. Please understand. Come see me first thing in the morning, though, huh? Promise me you'll be all right.”

“I don't know. Don't make me leave.”

“You'll be fine.”

Gracie kissed her on the cheek, right at the edge of her nose.

“Now go on,” said Gracie. “You gotta slam the door, hard, when you leave.”

“I can't leave, I need you!”

“Shit, Justine. Just get out. You'll be fine.”

“Gracie, I can't go—”

“Suit yourself, then, Justine, Jesus Christ. Just don't fucking be here when I get back. Jesus.”

Gracie got out and slammed the door. She took off her brown suede shoes and ran after Curren, calling his name.

At Luby's Cafeteria Justine ordered a fried-fish plate and a Dr Pepper and four different flavors of Jell-O, and, at a round, family-sized table against a wall of leaden gray-green drapes twenty-five feet high, she sat down, facing the restaurant, alone. As she waited for the round man with the old-fashioned monocle on a black string to come by with the coffee cart, she removed from her backpack a small, elegant stationery system that had been a birthday present from Charlotte, complete with felt calligraphy pens, handmade deckled paper, and a roll of twenty-two-cent stamps.

She wrote out two letters.

          
I love you. I'm sorry I had to do this. Dot is dead because I didn't rescue her in time, and Troy broke up with me, and I'm so mad at Livia for so many things. And I'm mad at Lou too. Mostly I'm confused about everything. It's for the best that I'm gone. I promise that it didn't hurt. I'm in the yellow car in the alley. I love you. Love, Justine.

Justine wrote and rewrote the note several times, unsure of the proper verb tenses for this peculiar grammatical situation. Finally, satisfied at least that the message was clear without being cold, she placed the letter in an envelope and addressed it to Charlotte.

The second letter said:

          
I saw you and him in the garage. I'm dead and it's your fault.

Justine did not have to revise this one. She folded it without care and placed it in an envelope, which she addressed to Livia, at Charlotte's house. She forewent capitalizing as a form of disrespect.

A full roster of eight-year-old baseball players in yellow-and-black uniforms streamed into the dining room like polluted floodwater. Each
child screamed at a different pitch while racing around the tables, their plates of macaroni and cheese and chicken-fried steaks and pudding skidding around on their trays, sometimes jumping the trays' curbs and crashing to the floor.

Erkule, the coffee-cart man, came around again and refilled Justine's cup. His attitude earlier had been friendly, almost jolly, but now every time a baseball child came near he winced, as though he'd just gotten a surprise intra-marrow injection.

“Is it like this every day?” said Justine.

“Yes, yes,” said Erkule. “But in wintertime? Football children, with helmets.”

Justine left a big tip. She went into the bathroom. In a stall she took Gracie's panties and hose out of the pocket in her backpack and put them on. As she pulled up the hose, her leg stubble caught on the elastic web of fibers, causing a run and a not-unpleasant rasping sound. The run enlarged into a tenuous ladder stretching from her upper thigh to her instep. Then she left the stall, stood in front of the mirror over the row of sinks, and washed her face as well as she could with a wet paper towel. In her backpack she had a few paper-wrapped single-edged razor blades that she kept together with a blue rubber band. She removed the band and used it to tie her hair back. She counted her money, looked closely at her braces and the leftovers trapped within them, then picked up her backpack and left the ladies' room.

She paid, bought a couple of Andes mints, took a toothpick. Outside, she found a pay phone and called a cab, which was there in less than two minutes.

When they got to Justine's part of town she asked the cabbie, Stellamarie Sykes, if she would drive through the neighborhood post office.

“Mm,” said Stellamarie, who pulled into the parking lot of the Speedway P. O. and stopped at the mailboxes. “Gimme your letter.”

“There're two.”

“Okay, gimme your letterzzz
zuh.
”

Stellamarie Sykes reached over her shoulder and began a rapid pinching movement with her fingertips. Justine gave her the letters, which she examined closely.

“Same address—you waste a stamp,” she said, flipping each envelope over and back again like fresh Polaroids.

“I know.”

“Next time you got forty-four cents to throw away, you give me a call. I'll come by and get it.”

After a brief but militarily icy stare at Justine through the rearview, Stellamarie dropped the letters into the mailbox.

“You want me to run you by a fountain you can pitch some money into?”

Justine sighed. She would not miss Stellamarie.

“Please just go three blocks thataway and drop me off.”

“
Rmf.
”

Justine paid the $15.15 with a twenty and, without waiting for change, walked straight down the alley and past her house until she came upon the old yellow Camaro behind the spooky, long-abandoned, unsalable murder-suicide house. It was dusk and still hot. Insects wheeled around the streetlights. The Maine coon cat was nowhere in sight.