Daphne_A Novel Page 15

  “Daphne?” I heard him say through gritted teeth. “Daphne?” The orgasm crept up, and the buzzing—both peaking at once, shuddering through my body. My fingers went, my arms, my legs. I sank into the bed. And then my whole body shook. It shook without shaking, clenched while going slack, cried out by falling silent.

  TWENTY-TWO

  WE SHOULD TALK ABOUT IT,” HE KEPT TELLING ME. “We should at least talk about it. You’re mad at me. Admit it. It was completely my fault we were even there.”

  But I didn’t blame him for his curiosity. I’d been curious, too. And it wasn’t up to him to know my limits, especially when I’d been testing them myself. How could I explain? It had just been a moment, a few seconds in the middle of the chaos, but I couldn’t pick it all apart. I might easily have been furious with him, or at myself for taking such a dumb risk. I might have been afraid, thrilled, or cripplingly disappointed that I really couldn’t do all of the things he and I wanted me to. It was even possible that I felt, in the moment, a sick sense of vindication.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let it all out. I can take it. Isn’t it better just to let it all out?”

  “Christ, don’t you think I’ve heard that before?”

  “Daph . . .” He was quickly beside me, a supportive arm around my waist.

  I had to laugh, dry and hard. “First you want me to be angry, then you worry about me being angry?”

  “It was my fault. Come on, just tell me.”

  But there was nothing to let out. At the march I hadn’t switched off. I’d only been knocked over, then instinctually curled up. I couldn’t even say that, in the moment, fight-or-flight had made me preternaturally calm. Or at least I wouldn’t have called it calm. Honestly, it would’ve been easier if I could tell Ollie I was furious with him.

  Instead all I felt, then and now, was the knot.

  MIRANDA HAD BEEN putting together her tenure file and was all gloom and doom. Bill had sunk into low-grade resentment of everything: Missing his son’s soccer tournaments because the kids were too cute in their uniforms. Having to always get rides to work from his wife, feeling embarrassed in front of the guys at the office. Having to miss his weekly golf game after spraining his wrist listening to little Danny tell a knock-knock joke. Teshawn was on a stricter regimen than ever. He spent whole meetings staring through us. Occasionally, he’d talk about wanting to go out, see friends, meet girls, instead of working all day, dragging his frozen ass home, taking a pill, sleeping till work again. With bland indifference, he told us his foreman had threatened to suspend him. A couple of weeks back, he was so out of it he nearly drove a forklift off the loading bay.

  And Sherman was more bruised and scraped every time I saw him. He came in one Sunday sporting a scabbing-over gash above his right eyebrow. “Probably shouldn’t pick at it,” I told him as we stacked desks.

  He reached up, worried it with his fingernail. “It’s worst when I’m switched off. I want to itch like crazy. You ever get that?”

  “Never have. Shit, maybe I cracked a rib, though.” I touched my side, the knot, showed him my splinted fingers. “Maybe it’s from the same spill,” I speculated.

  “It’s torture,” Sherman said. “I can’t stand it.”

  “You ever feel like you’re full all the time?” I went on. “So full it almost feels like you’re hollow? Shit, maybe I should go up on the roof, scream it out.”

  “Primal scream. We should all try that some time.”

  “We’d have to put foam mats everywhere. Or we could rent those big sumo suits. You can go ass over teakettle in those.”

  He tapped his belly. “Some of us might not need them.”

  “Listen, Sherman, please, don’t take this personally . . .”

  “I’m okay about my weight. Really.” He sized me up. “Or should I be sitting down for this?”

  “It won’t be a surprise. The group, I need to take another break. A longer one.”

  “They find a helpmate, then they just drop out. You wouldn’t be the first.”

  “The study . . . I don’t want to ruin anything else in here.”

  “Well . . .” Sherman said.

  We stood there, two specialists in internal weather, unable or maybe just unwilling to ask what squalls and tempests were in the other, what doldrums.

  “If you ever want to get out of the fog belt,” I said, “I’m a pretty good cook. We’d love to have you over.”

  “One of these days.” Sherman looked down at the floor, but I’d seen his eyes flutter. “Nice to hear you say that word.”

  “Which one?”

  “We.”

  My phone buzzed; my car had arrived. “Want a ride?”

  He scratched violently at his scar, mussing up his hair. It made him look boyish, lost. “Thanks, but I’m going to take a stroll. Enjoy the last of summer.”

  “Give me January rain any day. Wash all the drunks and idiots off the street.”

  “Daphne, don’t take this personally.”

  “Do your worst.”

  “Cynicism is not going to save your life.”

  “I know. But maybe I can get a stay of execution.” My phone buzzed again.

  “See you around, Daphne.”

  “Stay safe.” I said it as honestly as I could. “Stay open.”

  “Sure. You, too.”

  I reached out and took his hand. I probably did have the tongue to say everything I wanted to then: He was right to hold out for a cure, Olivia never deserved him, I hoped I’d never come back here. Instead, I just squeezed his hand harder. My bandaged fingers throbbed. I think I felt him squeezing back. It was so faint I couldn’t be sure.

  “HEY,” OLLIE SAID AT DINNER, “are you on birth control?”

  I put down my forkful of pork belly and broccolini and gave him a quizzical look.

  “It’s just . . . We didn’t use protection that one night.”

  “That’s because I was trying to get pregnant.”

  He went as white as overcooked salmon.

  “What,” I said, “no points for attempted jokes? Don’t worry, I got Plan B. Wow, long time since anyone’s worried about me being pregnant.”

  Ollie wore an introspective look. “Is that . . . Do you want that at some point?”

  I sawed at a tough bit of pork and clammed up. Before, I’d never wanted to even chance saddling someone else with the condition, or with the worry I’d feel every day over such a child. Since I’d met Ollie something had shifted, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to vocalize it yet. I swallowed my bite and felt my too full, too empty stomach contract.

  “Just because I’m thirty,” I said, “doesn’t mean we have to talk about breeding.”

  “Does your mom have it?” Ollie asked. “I could see why you’d want to be cautious.” Well, never say he wasn’t perceptive.

  “Seems like my dad did. No one can be sure, but probably, yeah.”

  “You don’t talk about him much.”

  “More broccolini?”

  “Whenever you’re ready. I’d love to hear about him.”

  I wouldn’t have minded talking about my father. But every time I bumped against my memory of him, all I saw were those blurred, fluttering images. “You don’t have to be the perfect boyfriend tonight,” I said. “Just load the dishwasher.”

  “Sure you don’t want to go out and celebrate?” Ollie said. “The Pit Stop might be quiet. Just a couple of quiet drinks?”

  After the march, I hadn’t felt like doing anything for my birthday. He’d seemed disappointed but hadn’t pushed me. Instead, we’d had this evening, dinner in and an expensive bottle of prosecco, which I was now removing from the fridge.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “this is enough. This is all I want.”

  ON FRIDAY, STACI STOPPED me in the hallway, asked if I had a minute to talk, an apologetic smile trembling on her face. Lord, what now? I suggested we go down to the company café, which was dead in the late afternoon. If she was going to make a scene, better there. B
ut she asked to meet in the break room, at five-thirty. She wanted to ask my advice but left without saying about what.

  Maybe she was reconsidering vet school. She’d finally gotten a sense of her limitations and wanted to pursue something realistic. Maybe she was going to quit and wanted a reference. When I went in to the pens for the day’s last check on the dogs, she was nowhere to be seen. Christ. Biscuit looked up at me with his beagle’s frown. “I know how you feel,” I said. He put out his tongue, licked a pellet of food. He was looking sturdier, marginally. Maybe now was the time to go back in, see if we could do something for him, if we could save him.

  At five-thirty, I shut down my computer, gathered my things, checked my reflection in the black monitor, half-expecting to see myself frazzled and pinched. Instead, I looked uncommonly composed. As I went out, Pin and Byron weren’t at their desks. I went down to the break room. As soon as I was through the door, a racket broke out. My chin dipped to my chest—willows, cattails—but I got out of it quick.

  When they finished with the noisemakers and “Happy Birthday,” there was a cake. Two big candles, 3 and 0, and, in icing, the letters ALF with an X through them. “Okay, who knew?”

  Staci put up a mock-timid hand, glanced around as if someone else were going to claim credit. “Well, HR mentioned the date, and I might have volunteered to bake.”

  She cut slices, handed them around, said this was a thank-you from all of them. Whatever her intentions—not getting fired—the mood was festive. Even Byron seemed caught up, or at least the cake agreed with him. He’d had two pieces before anyone else had finished their first. Hidalgo also had a surprise, a bottle of mescal. “My cousin in Oaxaca, he makes it.”

  “Hidalgo, you shouldn’t have. Really.”

  He shrugged and grinned tentatively. “Man, I should’ve done more when those dudes broke in. But you came correct. I just, I couldn’t—”

  “Serious-looking stuff.” I held up the bottle.

  “Sorry, no worm.”

  “How about we all take a taste?” I said. “Just don’t tell the boss.”

  I poured everyone a half-inch of the pale golden stuff. We had it out of coffee mugs. Almost on cue, we all wrinkled our faces, exhaled sharply. Everyone laughed, and I let myself do the same, briefly. A nice moment; I should’ve been enjoying it. But I hung back and found myself next to Byron.

  “Someone once said, ‘No one will love you unless you succeed by thirty.’ ” Byron gestured around us. “All of this at such a tender age.”

  What could I say? For much of my life, I’d been convinced I’d never make thirty. “Well,” I told him, “we’ve got quite the team.”

  He reached for another piece of cake, wrapped it in a napkin. “Something to take home for the girls. They do tire of mice and rat.”

  Usually, we all groaned when Byron started talking about his beetles. They were some rare variety that, in his bid to be as off-putting as possible, he kept as pets. Once a week, he went over to MedEval’s mouse lab for a fresh bag of sacrifices to feed them.

  “Are they really flesh-eating?” I said.

  “You should see their mandibles. Nothing to cuddle up with at night.”

  “Do they have names?”

  Byron claimed to be a strict, rational speciesist. He saw the dogs clinically, insisted on their being merely a research tool. Were he running the lab, he’d sacrifice any dog as soon as it took a turn. He, at least, referred to them only by their numbers.

  “Of course not,” he said. “But they’re cared for. You should see them come clamoring at dinnertime.”

  “Is it love or just symbiosis?”

  He squinted, trying to read me. It occurred to me that the months and months of sniping and criticizing might have been his idea of begrudging respect. And maybe I, in turn, could appreciate him for not being a pushover or a soft sell, his esteem meaning more for being so stingily given.

  “Is there a difference?” he said.

  I raised my mug. “If only every relationship were so straightforward.”

  Two minutes later, I turned back, and there he was wearing a stocking cap, a ridiculous orange thing with the Giants logo on it. “What?” Byron said. “Can’t I be gangster, too?” Across the room, Hidalgo was eyeing him with skepticism bordering on disgust. There was no goddamn end to it. I poured myself another shot of mescal. It felt good going down but lit a fire in my gut. I pressed at the knot and felt it, burning.

  TWENTY-THREE

  SATURDAY EVENING, AS I WAS TAKING MY BATH, THE buzzer went. It startled me, and I slipped a couple of inches down in the tub before I got myself back. I wasn’t expecting a package, and Ollie was working late on a drywall job in Tiburon. The buzzer went again. I sloshed out of the water, threw on a robe. Maybe he’d left his keys behind. He was always doing that. But the voice that crackled hoarsely through the speaker . . . Brook.

  “Hey, I need to come up.” A scratching sound, a burst of static and breath. “Actually, I need you to come help me up.”

  I found her sitting on the front step in a black sheath dress and a familiar man’s sport coat, her stiletto heels kicked off on the sidewalk, her mascara smudged into a raccoon mask, and a small puddle of vomit before her. “Yeah, I know,” she said before I could ask. “But can we please get upstairs first?”

  I had to sling her arm over my shoulder. On the third-floor landing, she dropped one of her stilettos. It fell all the way to the bottom of the stairwell. She let the other one go as well. “Leave them,” she said. “I renounce them.”

  I got us into the apartment, into the bathroom, where she finished puking, made a few swipes at cleaning herself up. She stripped out of her dress. I went to the bottom dresser drawer. But I couldn’t bring myself to unseal her customary pajamas and pulled out a shirt and leggings instead. She splayed out on the couch with a blanket over her, looking like a wax statue. I squeezed into the other end, her feet in my lap.

  “Is this the perils of knowing all the bartenders in town? Or are we witnessing the effects of something more exotic here?”

  “I’m guessing you haven’t heard of head cleaner. The stuff you use to clean old VHS players. Shit, why do rich people do the most low-rent drugs?”

  She’d been at a party at Halloween’s place. Everyone had passed out around five in the morning. She’d woken up twelve hours later with her head thumping and her dress and bra hanging from the ceiling fan. Halloween’s friends were passed out in the living room. He was still snoring on the bathroom floor when she left at six.

  “Wait,” I said, “it’s almost eight. I thought he lived, like, four blocks from here.”

  “The walk took longer than expected.”

  “B, I’m so pissed at you right now.” But my face wasn’t drooping, my eyes not even fluttering.

  “I’m really, really sorry I missed your birthday.”

  “Whatever. No big deal.”

  “It’s a huge deal. Don’t tell me it isn’t.”

  I let too long go by without answering.

  “Did you even care that I wasn’t there?” The question mangled up her face.

  “One of these drugs is going to kill you.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m a professional.”

  “That’s very clear to me.”

  “You’re going to have to tell me what the fuck that MEANS.”

  I hesitated—and then I didn’t. “It means I’m sick of you throwing all your partying and fucking in my face.”

  “Excuse me, you’re the one fucked up about sex.”

  “For good goddamn reason.”

  “Fuck. Even when I come to you like this, you’re self-involved. Can you just help for once?”

  “With what? Huffing VHS cleaner? Fucking some rich dickhead just to land a job?” I should’ve been sinking into the couch at this point. My words should’ve been garbled. But there it was again, the knot. “I can’t worry about you this much.”

  “What the hell happened to us?” Brook croaked, tears about
to burst.

  “Most friendships go this way. Especially with me.”

  “Don’t lean on that. Just don’t.”

  “Well, I can’t lean on you.”

  Brook lay there fuming at me. I could’ve pulled things back. We both could have. But, really, was it worth the effort? After a few minutes, Brook groaned herself off the couch. She was too wasted to leave but grabbed her dress from the bathroom floor and started changing out of my clothes. “Keep them,” I said. And then I let her go, watched her wobble out the door and attempt the first flight of stairs. When she was gone, I dropped back down on the couch. But I didn’t switch off, not even close. I put a palm on the spot where she’d lain, the warmth of her body. I should’ve told Ollie. But by the time he got home, I was too knotted up to talk.

  ON SUNDAY I WOKE RAVENOUS. Brunch, strong coffee—that would unravel it. There was a new place at Dolores and 15th. I gave Ollie a nudge. He rolled over, buried his head in the pillow. A harder nudge. He yawned, fussed with his hair. “What’s the big rush again?”

  “If we don’t get there early, there’ll be a line out the goddamn door.”

  “Isn’t that the point of brunch, see and be seen? The comfortable classes showing off with twenty-dollar egg dishes?”

  “Oh, Christ, can we not do the Marxist analysis of breakfast right now?”

  Finally, we got out the door, turned the corner, and there was Jeff. Or his wheelchair anyway. I glanced over and saw him sprawled, as much as he could sprawl, on the sidewalk, stubby legs jutting out where he slumped against the wall, his chin on his chest, moaning or maybe mewling, a meager, pathetic sound. “Excuse me,” I muttered and stepped around him. I couldn’t. Everything that’d been building these last weeks—I just couldn’t. When I looked back Ollie was kneeling over him, trying to get him to sit up. A police cruiser rolled through the intersection. Ollie ran into the street, flagged it down. The cop got out with an annoyed hitch of his belt. He crouched next to Jeff, then went over to his cruiser and got on the radio. Ollie saw me standing up the block, exchanged a few more concerned words with the cop, then finally caught up.