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Luke
Two weeks in and I was sitting next to Rita in my chair, bouncing a tennis ball on the east wall. We were supposed to be looking for jobs. But every job Rita read from Cassie’s laptop either required a college degree, which I didn’t have, or required the capacity for heavy lifting and movement, which I didn’t have, either.
Johnno wouldn’t stop calling, even when I answered and told him I didn’t have my severance yet. So I’d turned my phone off. I’d learned to watch the sun as it moved across the floor, memorizing its path. Sun coming through the bathroom, hitting the mat, meant it was around eight o’clock.
With my phone off, I felt less of the gripping fear I had every time his name showed up on my screen. At least, I told myself, he didn’t know where Cassie lived. At least that part of my burden wasn’t on her shoulders.
I’d risked powering it up to call Jake a few times. He’d called back once and left a voice mail while my phone was off. The downside to the phone being out of commission was that I might have missed more of his calls, but luckily all the feelings—the guilt, the pain, the fear—went away when the pills did their work. I’d taken four already today.
Sun that hit the other side of the place, reaching the couch, meant it was around three in the afternoon. At the moment, it was near the wall, shining directly on the plants.
“Rita, I can tell you right now, it is exactly 11:58 a.m. Look at the time.”
“Oh, 11:52. Close.”
“Damn.”
Rita, currently unemployed, had been hired to “look in on me” for one hundred dollars a week. It was cheaper and easier than a nurse, and it meant Cassie didn’t have to worry about helping me get out of the chair when she had to work late, or go to her boyfriend’s house, which she’d been doing more and more since I bit her head off nearly every time she tried to help me. When the pain went away enough for me to speak like a normal person, I would tell Rita about Jake, about JJ, wishing I were talking to Cassie instead, and then feel guilty and take another pill.
Rita and I would talk about her son, who was around my age, living in Louisiana and trying to be a chef, and then we’d sit in silence watching Hell’s Kitchen for hours. Rita would order sesame chicken with broccoli to be delivered. Rita didn’t make me do any exercises, which meant I didn’t have to waste my time making my pain worse, and that was really all the exercises seemed to do. Somehow I could convince myself every time that the pill would make getting up a little more bearable, but it wouldn’t. There was slippage, I would tell myself when I tried to put any weight at all on the leg. The exercises make the slippage worse.
Rita returned from the kitchen, where she’d warmed up today’s plate of sesame chicken.
“Where’s yours?” I asked her.
“I’m burned out on Chinese food.”
Footsteps on the stairs.
Cassie entered, kicking off her Converses and socks, humming along to some tune in her headphones, smelling like fresh air. I wondered if I was excited because it was Cassie, or if I was excited because since I’d killed a fly earlier this morning, this was the most exciting thing to happen all day.
My tongue was feeling loose. Cloud head was descending. “Want some sesame chicken?” I called.
She paused in the path to her bedroom and looked at me, startled. “What?” She took her headphones off her ears and I noticed for the millionth time that everything was harder than before. I thought of our e-mails, our jokes. Speaking in code, poking at each other, but stopping if it hurt.
“Oh, I said do you want any lunch? You can have some of this,” I said.
“I can’t eat that shit,” she muttered, and continued on her way. That’s right. I always forgot. But how was I supposed to know? I don’t know, dumbass, maybe look it up.
“Well, I should be going,” Rita said. “I’ll leave you kids to it.”
“No, don’t go—” I began.
At the same time, Cassie said, “No, Rita, you can stay.”
“Nah, I gotta go let Dante out.” Rita held up a peace sign. “See ya later, champ.”
When she shut the door, the room got quieter. I could hear the music pumping from Cassie’s headphones across the room. She kept them around her neck, pressed pause, and continued into the kitchen without a word.
As I ate, I could hear her take something out of the refrigerator, the sounds of a knife hitting the cutting board. Since I’d moved in, she’d begun to sort of vibrate.
Or else I just knew her now. Measured steps, water for tea, humming: she had either just played music or had sex with Toby, which I hated to think about. Quick steps and tossing her purse meant she was late and pissed, or looking for something she had lost, which happened a lot; she forgot her phone on her nightstand at least every other day. Slow steps meant she was tired or thinking hard or about to sit down and write music.
My empty, sesame-sauce-streaked plate sat in my lap. I was about to set it aside, but then I realized Cassie might think I expected her to clear and wash it. Rita usually took care of this part. Well, not today, cloud head said. Cloud head told me I should prove that I wasn’t just an eating, sleeping blob.
But youare just an eating, sleeping blob, regular head said. You couldn’t keep Frankie safe. You can’t keep yourself safe. What makes you think you’re not going to fuck this up?
With my good leg, I scooted the chair into the kitchen, plate and fork in hand. Go ahead, try. See what happens when you try.
