When Riley doesn’t answer his door the next morning, I don’t even hesitate before going in. In the front room, I find a battered acoustic guitar and a four-track cassette recorder in the middle of the floor, surrounded by sheaves of notebook paper. They weren’t there the other day.
He’s in the same position in his bed as last time: hands behind his head, legs crossed at the ankles. A couple of empty bottles rest on the floor by the bed. He opens his eyes slowly. It takes him a few minutes to register me standing in the doorway to his bedroom, but then his face breaks into a smile. It’s so sudden and surprising that I can’t help but grin, too.
“Hey,” he says drowsily. He looks at me in a weirdly comfortable way that makes my stomach jump. A look that says it’s perfectly natural for me to be in the doorway to his bedroom at five-thirty in the morning. I hope he can’t see the warmth that’s spreading across my cheeks.
“It didn’t take me long to find out where you lived. Just asked around for the girl on the yellow bicycle and poof, there you were. Or weren’t, I should say. I enjoyed meeting your neighbors. Fine lot of men, they are.”
“You should get up. You look wrecked,” I say. “Are those ashes in your hair?” Jesus Christ, this guy.
He rolls over on his side and looks up at me sleepily, but grinning. “Hey, speaking of fine men. How’d that work out the other night? With your friend Michael? And his friend…Bunny?”
I purse my lips, but I’m not really pissed off. That comfortable look he gave me earlier is still working its magic. He looks delighted. “It didn’t, if you must know. Now get up. We can’t be late. I don’t want to be late.”
“Well,” he says, groaning as he sits up. “Michael’s loss, then.” He moans, like something hurts.
“Do you need help?” I ask warily. I don’t want to get too close yet, not after last time. “You look like total shit.”
“There you go with that sweet talk, Strange Girl. No, no help. I’ll be good as new after a quick dip in a scalding shower.” I step out of the doorway to let him pass. He heads to the bathroom. As soon as I hear the water running, I slip into the kitchen and cruise the refrigerator, my stomach churning, looking for something to eat, and also to distract myself, because as much of a jerk as he is, he’s still a kind of used-to-be-better-looking jerk, and he’s also, at this very moment, very naked.
A carton of eggs, a packet of tortillas, a jar of green salsa. A block of yellow cheese, a block of white cheese. I find a knife in a drawer and hastily cut a hunk of yellow cheese and cram it into my mouth. I’m careful to wrap the rest of it back up and replace it, just so, in the refrigerator. A half-drunk bottle of Chardonnay in the side pocket, next to a crusty jar of jam. Three oranges. I peel one open quickly, eat a few sweet slices, and shove the rest into my backpack. It’s an open, square kitchen, plain and weirdly clean and empty. Maybe he does most of his eating at True Grit. There’s a teakettle on the stove, which I wouldn’t have expected.
Under the sink is where I find his stash of bottles. I wonder where he keeps his other stash, the one Linus was talking about. Through the back-door window, I can see a sturdy wooden building in the yard, surrounded by fat cactuses.
Bare feet slap on the hardwood floor. Riley stands beside me at the window, droplets flaring off him as he rubs a towel against his head. “It’s my recording studio. I built it with some of the money from the second, and last, Long Home record that I was on. Kinda ramshackle, nothing fancy inside or anything, but it works. At least, it used to.” He runs his fingers through his hair.
“How come you’re not in a band anymore?” I ask. “I mean, you guys were kind of famous, right?”
He shrugs. “It’s the same old rock and roll story. Boy joins band, band gets big, or almost big. Nearly big. Big enough, anyway, so that egos grew, money floated from the sky, excess occurred, demons were created, or, in my case, simply crawled to the surface after remaining carefully cloaked. And what once rose high and mighty thus fell really, really fucking hard back to earth. The end.”
“Are you…do you still play?” He’s gazing at the studio with a faraway look in his eye.
“Sure. Sometimes.” He clears his throat, gives his hair a final scrub with the towel. “But you know what I’m really good at? Being a disappointment. You’ve gotta work with the talent you’re born with, I guess.”
He throws the towel on the kitchen counter. “Let’s hit the road, Strange Girl. Don’t want to make Linus mad.”
We’re quiet as we walk, me pushing my bicycle.
Being a disappointment, he said. I was always disappointing people, too, like my mother, my teachers. After a while, why bother trying? I can see what Riley’s talking about.
It’s just before six a.m. and the air is already warming up. I tie my hoodie around my waist. “Is it ever not hot here?” I ask. Riley laughs.
“Oh, shit. You ain’t seen nothing, girl. Wait until July. It’s like a hundred and twenty fucking degrees outside.”
We cross through the darkness of the underpass, silent, and after a while, it seems kind of comfortable, this not talking. I mean, I want to ask him more about the music thing, and what happened, but it’s okay not to talk, too. And a little part of me is still nervous; I don’t want to make him angry.
Half a block from True Grit, he stops and lights a cigarette. His hands are trembling fiercely, but I don’t say anything. “You go in first, okay? I’ll come in a few minutes.” Smoke drifts from his nostrils. “We shouldn’t go in together.”
I want to ask why, but I don’t. I just keep going and lock my bicycle to a pole. Linus shouts out a hearty “Hello!” when I get inside. Riley comes in a few minutes later and heads straight to the coffee. When he comes back to the dish area, he has two cups and hands me one.
I help Linus with the coffee urns and the espresso machine and then start on the dish area. Whoever worked dishes last night left plates of dried food stacked in the sink, topped with stained mugs, tea strainers, and the tiny, delicate spoons for the espresso cups. I lose myself in the task of scraping food into the trash, soaking plates and cups in the sink.
Linus walks back from the front, her face pale. “R, Bianca’s at the counter. She wants her money.” She lowers her voice. “Do we…have her money? Where the hell is Julie?”
Riley gets very still. “Uh, yeah. Let me just go cut her a check. I’ll be back.”
Linus bites her lip as Riley rushes down the hallway to the office. The doors to the kitchen swing open. A curvy woman in a loose purple dress looks around, her eyes suspicious. Linus says, “Riley went to get a check.”
The woman looks me over kind of grumpily and then huffs to Linus, “I don’t want to have to beg every time for my money, Linus. You guys want my goods, you pay and you pay on time. Julie needs to get her head together.”
“I know, Bianca. Things are a little wonky right now. Business is off some days and then roaring the next. We’re working on it.” Linus twists a dish towel in her hands.
Riley jogs back down the hall. When he sees Bianca, he slaps a hand to his forehead. “Lady B! I swear, it’s all my fault. My sister asked me to run some cash by the bakery yesterday and I forgot. My apologies.”
Bianca takes the check and inspects it. “A check, Riley? Is this one good? If this one tanks, I’m out. You people need to get your shit together.”
“It’s all good, Lady B.”
She grimaces and takes off through the kitchen doors. Linus glares at Riley. “Again, R? Again?”
“It’s not what you think, Linus, so why don’t you go back to work?”
Linus stalks back to the front. Riley walks past me without saying anything.
I listen to the murky burble of the fryer, to the drone of the grill, the dishes as they sway back and forth in the washer; I wonder what’s going on. What happened to the cash Riley had for that lady? What did Linus mean by again?
Then I find myself listening to the unmistakable sound of choking, and the rush-jumble of vomit. I whirl around.
Riley holds a hand to his mouth. He’s bent over the trash bin by the grill, liquid dripping from his chin.
I quickly hand him a towel and then cover my nose. The smell is awful.
He wipes his chin and neck, throws the towel into the bin, and opens the refrigerator door, blocking his face. When it closes, he’s drinking deeply from a can of beer. He sets it back inside, his chest heaving. The color’s returning to his face, spreading up his cheeks like a pink river.
There were older people, men and women, on the streets who acted like this. Who drank and drank and drank so much their bodies were slick with the stench of old wine, beer, vomit. The only thing, the next morning, that made their hands stop trembling, that made them stop heaving up bile or chunks of soup kitchen food? was more alcohol. The DTs, Evan called it. That’s some fucking nasty shit, he’d say, shaking his head.
The finger Riley presses to his lips has tiny red nicks from his chef’s knife. Because his hands were trembling so badly, I realize.
Shhhh, he mouths. He nudges the trash bin in my direction. I look over at Linus, who’s ringing someone up at the register. She told me to tell her if stuff like this happened.
Riley’s eyes plead with me. I’m not sure what to do.
And then Ellis’s texts flash in my brain. Smthing hurts. U never sd hurt like this. 2 much. My stomach churns with shame. I didn’t help her and I lost her.
Quickly, I pull the bag from the trash bin, tie it, and take it out back to the Dumpster. He did get me a job, after all.
Later, when my shift is over and I’m almost out the screen door, Riley appears with a brown paper bag.
“Messed up an order. Bon appétit.”
I hesitate before taking the bag, because by taking it, I know I’m agreeing to keep some sort of secret, and I’m still not sure I want to do that.
But the hunger knocking around in my stomach wins out. I’m so sick of stale bread and peanut butter. And as soon as I get home, I tear into that food: a green chili bagel with scrambled tofu and Swiss cheese, with a broken oatmeal raisin cookie wrapped in wax paper.
