Everything Happens Today Page 17

  Yellow: “Where r u?”

  White: “bdrm”

  Yellow: “Too many. Which?”

  White: “find me”

  Wes had found Lucy, in a room dark like the rest, with just a slash of light from the half-open door of an en-suite bathroom. A pink toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste stood in a white shaving mug on the rim of the sink, beside a disk of pink soap. Everything else was in blackness.

  “Lucy?”

  “Typo?”

  Wes turned towards the sound of Lucy’s voice, and as his eyes adjusted he was just able to pick out her silhouette, sitting upright with crossed legs against the headboard of a twin bed. He crossed the room, aware of thick pile carpeting beneath his feet that absorbed all sound, and sat at the foot of the bed, straddling the corner.

  “What’s ‘bnkdl’?”

  “Bnkdl?”

  “I said ‘want 2 dance’ and you said ‘bnkdl.’ I thought maybe it was some sort of code. Or maybe a joke, ‘cause you were talking about typos before. Or maybe, just, you know, ‘go away.’”

  “It wasn’t any of that. It was just a mistake. I didn’t even mean to send it.”

  “It’s okay. It was just a little confusing, you know, when I saw you sitting like that, after we . . . ”

  “I know, I’m really sorry. Delia’s just having a hard time. She’ll get over it.”

  Lucy sat there, unmoving, at the far end of the bed. Wes didn’t know what to do. This here, now, was precisely the moment he had been imagining, and trying not to imagine, all day long, but now that it was happening he thought that maybe what he liked better was when they were kissing in the hallway. It had been so simple, and her neck had smelled not of perfume but of some simple, fresh-scented soap, as if she alone of everyone at the party had not been steeped in a smog of tobacco and alcohol fumes. Somehow, her simply being fresh and clean had made her seem even younger than she was, and Wes had not been able to help himself—even as they were kissing and he felt her cool hand on the back of his neck, he had opened his eyes and seen her as Natasha, with her tank-top and jeans transformed into some vast crinoline ball gown and a black velvet choker around her throat, layer upon layer of fabric concealing and guarding her nudity. And because she was Natasha, he was Prince André, a fallen, middle-aged creep who lusted after teenage girls, and suddenly he had lost all desire to go any further. It wasn’t that he was not aroused, but she was clearly not the voracious carnivore of his fantasies, so his fantasies changed to accommodate her. He wanted to protect her, and kissing her in the dark seemed like the best way to do that. All the lurid imagery of the day had evaporated in the puff of sweet warm breath from her nostrils on his cheek. And now that he was here in her room, all he wanted was for her to invite him to kiss her again. It made Wes wish he was twelve again, and that he didn’t know everything he knew.

  “Can I ask you something, Lucy?”

  “Okay?”

  “Why did you invite me to your party? I mean, we didn’t even know each other.”

  “I didn’t invite you.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “You’re a gatecrasher, buddy.”

  “I’m a gatecrasher? But James said you . . . ”

  “So is James a gatecrasher. I mean, I don’t care. You’re welcome and all. I mean, obviously I’m glad you’re here and everything. But I didn’t invite any of you. I only invited my friends.”

  “What about Delia?”

  “She’s a friend of my sister. I have no idea what she’s doing here.”

  “Huh.”

  “But since you’re already here, I suppose you might as well stay.”

  Wes had stayed, only to wake up in an existential panic at four in the morning and walk home crying in the dark.

  Wes stretched himself out on his bed with the song of the oriole in his ear. To Wes, that song had always sounded like an elaborate question spoken in a very terse language, and it did so now, except that he had no interest in trying to answer it because it clearly wasn’t intended for him. Rather, he intended for the first time that day to luxuriate in the memories of last night’s adventure that he had been so assiduously avoiding all day, but he fell into a deep sleep instead, dramatically dream-free, from which he awoke only because the phone had somehow worked its way up the bedsheets and was ringing almost directly into his ear. Just to shut it up, he grabbed the phone and answered.

  “Yeah what?”

  “Wezbo, it’s James.”

  “Okay.”

  “Listen, I’ve got something to tell you, I’m not sure how you’re gonna take it.”

  “So?”

  “So I just got off the phone with Jillian. She was really . . . ”

  “Who’s Jillian?”

  “Your new sister-in-law, only.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “She’s Lucy’s sister. Lucy’s older sister.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well Jillian’s really good friends with Delia, and she told me that Delia’s really pissed at you.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Well, see, it turns out that Delia had dibs on you last night.”

  “Dibs?”

  “Well, see, it turns out that Delia had something planned to happen between you and her last night, and that’s why she asked Jillian to ask Lucy to invite you.”

  “I thought Lucy asked you to invite me.”

  “Well, I kind of made that up. I just wanted to get you away from Delia. I figured if you thought it was going to happen you’d make it happen, and you did. How was I to know Delia was planning to jump your bones? I mean, she waits a whole year, and then that’s the night she chooses? So anyway, she’s mad as fuck that you ditched her. I thought you’d want to know that.”

  “Thanks, fuckhead. Except you just happen to have got it all ass-backwards, as usual. See, Lucy told me that nobody invited us. She said you and me were gatecrashing, so Delia never could have asked Jillian to ask Lucy to ask me.”

  “And you believe Lucy?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “‘Cause how else would Jillian know you went to the party? Why else would she call me? She must’ve spoken to Lucy, right?”

  “So you think Lucy knew why Delia was at the party?”

  “Maybe. I think so.”

  “And you think Delia knows I slept with Lucy?”

  “Maybe. Delia’s pretty tight with Jillian.”

  “All right. All right. I’m gonna hang up now. I’ve got to think this through.”

  “Listen, Wezbo, I . . . ” But Wes had already disconnected.

  Wes lay there, not moving; even shifting an inch in any direction, even breathing too hard, could crack a bone or rupture some internal organ. Thinking, too, was a delicate endeavor; in circumstances like these, an uncontrolled attack of deep thinking could well prove fatal. Simple, baby steps were in order, the kind that could inch him away from the precipice without disturbing the frangible ground beneath him. If this were a book—but there was no such book, at least none that came to mind, unless maybe Les Liaisons dangereuses, but Wes could no more recall the plot, or which characters were the villains and which the dupes, than he could make sense of whether Lucy had lied to him, or of what part he himself had played in the deception, or even if any of that mattered anymore. There must be somewhere such a book, the book with the story that had just unfolded, or the book with a stupid boy like him, just like him—a book that disintegrates at the very instant you become aware of it. That was Wes—a boy who vanishes the moment you look at him. And even as this thought occurred to him, he realized that it was not true, because there was a book, and it was sitting on his desk. He rose to retrieve it, then returned to his bed and began to read intently, flipping randomly through the pages.

  “By order of the Secretary of the Army: CARL E. VUONO, General, United States Army Chief of Staff.”

  “Page 2-7. Change the fourth sentence from ‘Release the trigger.’ to ‘Slowly release the trigger.’ Add the follo
wing NOTE: For the purpose of this test, ‘SLOW’ is defined as 1/4 to 1/2 the normal ratio of trigger release.”

  “Warning: With the bolt carrier assembly locked to the rear or in its forward position, if the weapon is dropped or jarred with a loaded magazine in place, it could chamber a round.”

  “Do not expose ammunition to the direct rays of the sun. If the powder is hot, excessive pressure may develop when the rifle is fired.”

  “The radioactive material used in these instruments is tritium gas (H-3) sealed in pyrex tubes. It poses no significant hazard to the repairman when intact.”

  “If there’s water in the barrel, don’t fire the rifle. It could explode.”

  “Squeeze the trigger and fire.”

  “Hot, dry climates are usually dusty and sandy areas. They are hot during daylight hours and cool during the night hours.”

  “If your rifle needs improvement, let us know. Send us an EIR. You, the user, are the only one who can tell us what you don’t like about your equipment. Put it on an SF 368 (Quality Deficiency Report). Mail it to us at Commander, US Army Armament, Munitions and Communications Command, ATTN: AMSMC-QAD, Rock Island, IL 61299-6000. We’ll send you a reply.”

  Wes wondered if the address were still active, and then he began to cry, and at that moment Nora entered the room.

  “Oh Jesus not again,” she said in Bobby’s voice, and sat herself down on the edge of the bed besides Wes, who rolled onto his side facing the wall. Wes was immediately mindful of the need to control himself in Nora’s presence, but her hand on his shoulder only made it harder. At least he was good at crying without blubbering or heaving; he didn’t even sniffle, though that would have to happen eventually. He decided it would be best if he didn’t say anything for the moment; instead he emitted a low, croaking groan, as if Nora could be convinced that he was both suffering some sort of gastric event and that he was enduring it stoically. It was at such moments, Wes recalled, that the Buddhist visualization techniques that Delia had attempted to teach him came in most handy, and he closed his eyes and tried to recreate in his mind’s eye the calf-brushing scene from his dream. He felt it wavering into coherence; he saw the calf, and his own hand on the calf’s shoulder, clasping the toothbrush, and the toppling verdant landscape; but he felt nothing, and he realized that the singular critical element of the dream—its sense of endless, unfettered serenity—was entirely absent from his visualization, and that without it the calf was just a dumb animal, the poor suffering mute that had exploded in outer space to provide him with its sweetbreads. But now a different vision emerged, more promising, and he followed it with interest and nascent detachment.

  “What’s Leslie thinking?” Bobby asked.

  “I’m thinking about a river in a book I read once.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “In this book, a woman is chosen to be the devil’s consort at his annual ball. She’s given a magic cream that makes her invisible, and a broom that flies her half way across Russia. She flies high above the silent forests and grassy plains. And finally, the broom slows down and leaves her on the edge of a bluff over a black river somewhere in the middle of nowhere. On the other side there’s an encampment of frogs playing flutes and drums. And she dives off the bluff into the river, and the spray leaps into the sky and sparkles in the moonlight. For some reason I always remember that—the water flying up and glowing in the moonlight, and swimming naked in the black river in the wilderness in the middle of the night. Just imagine that—all alone in a cool river in the middle of the nowhere under a full moon, and feeling completely safe and happy.”

  Nora was quiet, and Wes could feel her behind him visualizing the scene of Margarita in the river and creating all her own details, because that was the way her mind worked. One day, he hoped, she would read that book and love it as much as he did and it would be one more thing they had in common; but then again, Nora wasn’t bookish.

  “How many fingers does a frog have?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t think a frog can play the flute, because of the webs.”

  “They’re magic frogs.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m just going to lie here for a while until I feel better?”

  “You want Bobby to sit with you?”

  “That’s alright. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  “How was the movie?”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Sorry for forgetting about you.”

  “Jive turkey.”

  “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know. Six? Six thirty?”

  “I’ll get dinner started soon. Want to help?”

  “Groovy.”

  When Nora had left, Wes didn’t move. Not moving definitely seemed the right way to proceed. He tried to recapture the vision of the placid midnight river, but now all that came to mind was the scene from his dream in the Rose Reading Room where the jet liner banked over Bryant Park as it screamed towards the library windows. Wes had no interest in the occult, but he was beginning to see the dream, with its series of cascading enigmas, as a premonition of disaster. The question was—was his current situation the disaster it predicted, or was there worse to come? It didn’t bear contemplating.

  Something else was wrong, too, but it lingered just beyond Wes’s peripheral understanding. He lay there and listened to hear if it would pipe up, like an unseen bird calling from the upper branches of a tree, so that he might at least focus his attention in the right general direction. It was silent; in fact, all the sounds of the world had gone oddly muted, or muffled, as if a great wet sheet had been draped over the city, and Wes opened his eyes and saw that the sun had set, somehow, and he was lying in darkness. When had it happened? Had he slept without realizing? Had it already been dark when James had called, when Nora had stopped in? Wes listened: a truck ground its gears on Hudson Street; two drivers angrily exchanged horn-fire; a pair of stilettos made its way uncertainly up Perry, stopped for a few moments as if they were aware of being listened to, then continued on their way. They sounded as if they were alone, but of course there was no way to tell; a pair of soft-soled shoes could just as well have been walking beside them, exchanging intimacies, but there was nothing in the pace or rhythm of the footfall that indicated such a companion. That, of course, was the problem with listening to footsteps in the night—for some reason, they always sounded lonely, no matter the reality. It was almost as if you wanted them to be lonely, because there was something sympathetic to the heartbeat in the sound of lonely steps echoing on a quiet cobblestoned street, the heart just sort of fell into step naturally beside them. The phone rang, lost somewhere in the tangled sheets, but Wes did not bother to look for it. The ringtone, mimicking the metallic bell that dial telephones had had before Wes was born, was oddly consonant with the disembodied message of loneliness sent by the stilettos. Wes could imagine the wearer of those stilettos pausing in the street to the distant sound of an unanswered telephone. She would stop just as she had done, look around in confusion, and wonder why she felt as if she were being watched; then she would shake her head—it was just an illusion, a trick of the lamplight through the breeze-laden branches—and be on her way. Wes wondered what the chances were that Lucy was feeling that way at this very moment, if perhaps the image of the woman in stilettos was a message that she had sent him telepathically, like the message of love that the alien Mrs. Fielding had sent him in room 405; although Lucy seemed the more practical sort, it might have been an inadvertent message, like the kind Obi-Wan Kenobi received upon the destruction of Alderaan. Wes felt as if he knew precisely what it would be like to hear a million voices cry out and suddenly be silenced—it seemed as if it happened to him a dozen times a day.

  He sighed and sat up, feeling the iPhone slip and bump against his thigh. He reached for it and activated the screen. It was 6.47 p.m. on November 1 2008. There was one missed call, no message. The missed call was from Lucy, but Wes c
ould face no further news, good or bad. He felt like André on his death bed, sickened by the prospect of another course of legless optimism. In a situation such as that in which he now found himself, the only possible course of action was one of blind duty. There were sweetbreads to be made, a mother to feed.

  On his way downstairs, Wes pressed his ear against his mother’s bedroom door and, detecting the sedate drone of a news broadcast, peeked in. She turned towards him with a crooked smile and the blank, open gaze of one who could not recognize an intruder at fifteen feet. Wes crossed the room and sat himself gently on the bed alongside her; she patted the back of his hand and returned her attention to the television.

  “Can I get you anything, mom?”

  “I am hungry.”

  “I’m just getting dinner started. You want something to drink?”

  “Just some pudding, Leslie honey.”

  “No pudding tonight, mom. I’m making a real dinner.

  “What are you making?”

  “Mom! I’m making sweetbreads?”

  She turned to him with a look of astonished horror, made all the more grotesque by the lazy eye that seemed to focus on something beyond Wes’ left shoulder. She gagged and cleared her throat of her first attempt to speak, but managed on the second to emit a kind of croaky, froggy gasp. “Sweetbreads? Whatever for are you making sweetbreads?”