It’s so sly, the way it happens. Like a thread through a needle: silent and easy, and then just that little knot at the end to stop things up.
Temple is scrolling through her phone, sitting on the stool behind the counter, as I stack coffee mugs and plastic water cups on trays. The band never showed up tonight, and she let Frances and Randy go early, because the place was dead. Linus is in the back, reading a book.
Temple says, “Didn’t you date Mike Gustafson? Or something? I know I saw you guys at Gentle Ben’s a couple times.”
“No,” I tell her. “He’s just my friend. Why?”
She shakes her head and makes a disappointed, clucking sound. “All the good ones get snapped up, don’t they?” She angles her phone. “Check it out. That hot little weasel went and got married in Seattle!”
It feels like moving through mud, making my way to her, bending to look at the image on the phone. Facebook, someone’s page I don’t know, maybe a band member, and there it is, there he is, there she is, and they’re both smiling insanely, their faces shining. He’s wearing a button-down shirt and a red tie with jeans and sneakers. Bunny is wearing a plain and pretty strapless flowered dress, with a crown of tiny, delicate roses in her hair. The roses match Mikey’s tie.
All the blood in my body turns cold in an instant. I don’t know what sound I’m making until Temple starts shouting to Linus, “I think Charlie’s gonna hurl, Linus! Come help!”
I’m heaving, but nothing is coming out. I hold my head over the trash can, make an excuse: “I think I ate something bad for lunch. I have to go, can I go,” and Linus says she’ll give me a ride, it’s almost closing anyway, but I stumble up and away from her, grab my backpack, leave the coffeehouse in a blur. I forget my bike.
I walk so hard my shins start to burn and then I start to limp. I break into a run at the underpass and don’t stop until I’m at his door, pounding.
I’m ashamed that I still feel like I have to ask to go into his house.
He opens the door, pulls me in. I’m sick, I tell him, tears coursing down my cheeks. I’m just sick, so sick. And then, as though someone pulled a plug in me, everything drains out of me at once, and I fall on the floor.
I can hear Riley swearing and little Oh, Jesuses, and Oh, honeys, as he unties my boots, strips off my socks. He picks me up carefully, sliding his hands under me. I’m dizzy. He’s a blur.
Riley takes me to his bed. After a time, his sheets grow damp with my sweat and he peels off my overalls, touches the back of his hand to my forehead. He sets water by the bed, a small bin with a plastic bag inside. I throw up three times and he empties the bag each time. He asks me, Did you take something? I tell him no and roll toward the wall. I lost something, I lost some things, I tell him. I keep losing things. I’m tired.
Riley says, I’m sorry to hear that, baby. But he doesn’t ask any more questions. He tells me he’ll cover my shifts at True Grit. He draws on his cigarette and his eyes are the slick dark of stones underwater. For three days, he works in the morning and he covers my dish shifts at night. He heats bowls of broth. He sets a cool cloth on my forehead. As he sleeps behind me, his breath is a billowy sail against my neck. On the fourth day, I stagger from the bed when there’s a knock at the front door. It’s Wendy from the drug house, her red-and-yellow hair mashed under the hoodie of her jacket, scratching at her cheek. She says, I need Riley, where’s he at? He around? Her skin is like the surface of the moon. When I don’t answer, she smiles. Haven’t seen him in a while, is all. We get worried.
You don’t look so good, kid, she says. Tell him Wendy came by.
All day Wendy appears in my dreams, long-legged and smudge-faced, smoky-voiced and grinning. When Riley comes home late, late, he’s not so far gone that I can’t press against him in the dark, work at him with my fingers, make him noisy, make him do things to me that he doesn’t know hurt me, all to erase Mikey and Bunny, Wendy at the door, erase the gray turning back to black inside my body. We are such a terrible mess now.
