Carousel Court (28 page)

She reaches for the smoothie. He hands her the cup.

“Thanks again for the house you put me in. It's perfect. Not all this, but better than Arik's place.”

“You owe me rent.”

“It's in your pocket.”

“Stand up.”

She's on the third stair, so when she stands and Nick moves closer, she's taller than he is. He takes her hands. Her chin is at his forehead. He breathes her in. He reaches into his back pocket and removes the plastic bag of marijuana. “Tell me where you want me to put this.”

She takes his right hand, the one that holds the bag, guides it down the backside of her tight yellow shorts. Nick closes his eyes and rests his head against her chest but only for a moment, never quite stops moving, massaging her breasts through her shirt with his forehead, chin, until he's pulling at her shorts, which somehow fall to her ankles, and he drops to his knees and urges her back down on the stairs, removing her shirt, and even as he tastes her, he can't jettison images of Phoebe pressed against a wall, JW's hand pinning her head against it. In refracted kitchen light, the faded acne scars are visible on Mallory's chest, as are the red marks from the grip he's had on her shoulder and neck, and he finishes and collapses next to her on the stairs, reaches for the white cup and tries to take a sip, but it's empty.

• •

Mallory doesn't ask any questions and doesn't stay. Nick walks her to the car. They're both barefoot and he's still shirtless. The scent of smoke hangs in the air.

She stops at her car, keys in hand, and turns to him. “So I'm wondering something. You think Arik's an idiot, don't you?”

“I think he's young.”

She's laughing. “He pays the rent. So there's that.” She slaps Nick's chest for emphasis.

Nick puts it together: They're in some kind of dysfunctional relationship that is all too familiar. They're working through something and making a mess of things, but they have an advantage that Nick
and Phoebe don't enjoy, and Nick envies them for it. What they have that Nick and Phoebe gave away, so long ago he can't recall, is some margin for error.

Low white clouds distract him. “It's smoke,” he says, more to himself than to her. She kisses Nick quickly on the mouth, hard, then turns from him. She left the Sirius radio on and a familiar pop song blasts from the speakers when she starts the car and she doesn't bother turning it down, and when the MINI Cooper's red taillights disappear around a bend in the deserted private road in the gray dawn light, Nick sees for the first time the shattered second-floor window and the illegible black graffiti tags on the right side of the house. He wonders how he missed those details, if maybe they happened since he arrived, while he slept. He wonders what other signs he's missed. Inside, there is a slow leak in the air mattress and only cold water runs in the shower.

• •

The next night, his last in the house, Nick sits shirtless on the edge of the empty pool, lighting long wooden matches he found in the kitchen, tossing one after another into the blackness and watching the dark hills, waiting for the winds to come and the fire with it. The wailing is the cicadas. They're dying, he thinks. Phoebe hears them, too, wherever she is. The alarm they've ignored for too long. He has enough money, nearly sixty thousand in cash, to take Jackson anywhere, back to Boston, somewhere different, some new adventure. Maybe New Orleans. The simplicity of a father and son. At some point the boy will ask questions and Nick will answer them all, honestly and without hesitation. Your mother did what she could to take care of you. Your mother made herself who she is, and everything she gave you and continues to give only happens because she decided it was important. But she was tired, it was work, and there is something in her that needs special attention, and sometimes people can only fix the broken parts of themselves alone. Sometimes it's safer that way.

Punk-ass bitch

The text is from Phoebe.

Then a winking emoticon.

Cleaned out the fridge and three loads of laundry and smoked a joint with Marina. Do you still think she's hot? She thinks you're hot. She asked if we MUCK around! I think she meant mess. Do you, Nick? Do you MUCK around? Because you can if you want to.
It's not like we ever have sex anymore and I totally understand and wouldn't be upset because the bottom line is you're still here and in days, literally, you won't believe what's happening. So tomorrow, 8 am? Please don't be late.

• •

Nick drags the air mattress out on the patio but doesn't sleep. He's hungry and missing his son and Blackjack, staring at misshapen dark patches where the clouds are thinning and the glimmer of faint stars and wondering if it's possible that he'll ever miss Phoebe again because tonight he doesn't miss her at all.

58

N
ora. Nora?”

“It's Phoebe.”

“I want to call you Nora. Do you mind if I call you Nora?” The man asking her this is the physician who sat casually on a barstool an hour ago under recessed lighting and for six thousand dollars a month spoke convincingly into a microphone about the merits of GSK's latest erectile dysfunction remedy to a roomful of colleagues, sales reps, and managers. He's buzzed and standing too close to Phoebe in a crowded suite in the same hotel.

The room is restless, quieter than usual, more reps, Phoebe figures, sobered by the new corporate directive for managers: The bar has been raised to stay employed until further notice; the bottom half in sales will be terminated at the end of the year. Phoebe was in the bottom twenty percent and has been since she started out here.

“Why the long face, Nora?” the physician asks, grabs a full champagne flute from a passing tray, replaces Phoebe's half-empty one.

Attendance tonight is a box Phoebe needs to check and is the least she can do. She's here because she still hasn't heard from JW. This conversation with the physician, well-managed, should pay off. She'll
make an impression that will give her an edge over other reps. She may not become his rep, but he can send her to colleagues with large practices and new patients, which will boost her sales numbers, secure her spot in the top half by year's end.

But he keeps calling her Nora.

All of the physicians here are men. So are most of the GSK managers, about six or so, and the dozen or more GSK sales reps are women. One of them must be Nora. Phoebe peels her name tag from her chest and sticks it on the man's forehead. “Phoebe Maguire,” she says.

The company men are managers, and all seem to have sticky product in their hair and wear leather necklaces and probably wax their bodies. A few of the sales reps and managers are playing a game, a holdover Phoebe recalls from orientation for new hires. A woman shrieks, then earsplitting laughter. The game they're playing is charades and becomes something pornographic when one of the reps allows a young man to lift her skirt while her friend pulls the pants of the same guy to his knees. Someone pours champagne on them.

Phoebe's district manager stands between two tan, waxed men, clutching a champagne flute. He's watching her with the physician. He insisted she come tonight. She met him once before, when he interviewed her. Big cheeks, twenty pounds overweight. His receding hairline gives way to a massive forehead that makes his green eyes appear even smaller. The manager grilled Phoebe during the interview about why she wanted to go back in the field: Was she doing it for the money or was she committed to the GSK army? Was she mercenary or soldier? He asked these questions with a straight face. The physicians don't respect him and the reps resent him. Still he tries. He wears a black silk shirt with zippers on it and a black leather necklace and he's staring at her. She meets his eyes. His expression doesn't match the mood in the room, or maybe it does. His gaze is distant, somehow lost. When he notices that Phoebe's staring back, he raises a glass in a cross-suite toast. She does the same.

Phoebe checks her cell: 11:02
P.M
.

“Do you have a curfew, Nora?” the physician asks.

She ignores the question. Her manager is suddenly next to her, his chest pressed against her shoulder.

“They took a month longer than they planned, but it was worth it.” The manager is actually trying to impress the physician with talk about work he says he had done on his condo.

“Your
rented
condo,” Phoebe interjects.

The physician isn't listening. Despite standing so close to Phoebe's manager, the physician isn't hearing a word he's saying. He lingers instead on Phoebe's shoes. They're silver. “Those are something.”

The manager checks his handheld and reads a message that isn't there.

The wedding band on the physician's hand is thick silver; despite its prominence, he leers at her. There's no subtlety in his approach. His right hand is dug deep into his pants pocket until he removes it, brings it to Phoebe's chin, and gently rubs something from her face.“Got it,” he says. His eyes are set too close together and he has thin lips with a short neck and his stomach pushes against the buttons of his shirt, which is tucked too tight. “Where back east?”

She says Boston and looks away, and the image that comes to mind is from late last spring: Nick carrying Jackson on his shoulders through the community gardens at dusk, their backs to her. The physician says he went to Harvard, and when she hears this, for some reason it breaks the spell and she says, still distant, “I didn't.”

The physician starts listing colleges and universities in greater Boston, from the most prestigious and highly selective to the less competitive schools until he gets to Boston University, where she stops him by grabbing his forearm. “It was a fun school.”

He says he was surprised it wasn't BC or some other Jesuit school and asks if she's Catholic.

“She's a heathen,” her manager says. “She was pleasant once, too. Warm even,” he confides to the physician.

The physician is wretched with perspiration over his upper lip and on his chin and leans in to Phoebe and says she feels warm, sliding his arm around her waist, squeezing her. “Strong, too.”

The manager says she was a pro back east. “Stellar,” he says.

And then her manager has his hand on the back of her neck. “Out here, not so much,” he says.

She's up for auction. She is the prized piece of pharma meat tonight.
Yet she's the hunter, too, and the big game in the room, this vile little mole of a man, may be gettable after all. She runs some quick numbers and concludes that she could land this pervert and ten more just like him and all their patients and she'd still be in the bottom third. Which means, come December, she'd be fired. She finishes her champagne and tosses the flute on the floor next to the sectional.

“Let me help.” The physician takes her hand and holds it.

In this moment, two men, strangers to her, feel compelled to place their hands on her and keep them there.

The physician's breath is warm when he presses his small wet mouth against her ear. “I'll prescribe it all. Whatever you're selling. Come to my office twice a month.” He takes her hand and places it over his crotch and holds it there.

There are forty-five strangers in this room, and her eyes find the red and orange impressionistic print on a wall over the desk. The image is fluid and at first is a compressed face winking at her in the din of the sloppy crowd and shrieks of laughter, and a hand clutching her ass too hard turns the benevolent face flattened on the canvas into a demon, red eyes and long teeth, and the blood in its mouth is her own.

• •

When she hits the bend in the freeway, she accelerates. She weaves through traffic. She wants to drive home. She wants to slip off her shoes and pour a glass of South African wine and walk upstairs to Jackson's room and sit with Nick and listen to their son sleep. She wants to wake up in the room to the sound of his little voice and Nick opening the blinds and letting the soft morning light fill the room and start their day. She wants to apologize to Nick and admit she's not nearly as in control as she wants to be. She wants to come clean: She doesn't trust herself.

She's still driving, and the long thin silhouettes are skinny palms against the thick black sky she knows is choked with smoke from fires and smog, and the bleak dry hillsides are tinder for what's coming. She feels small and clutches the wheel too tightly and presses down on the gas and it's her alone on this stretch of asphalt hugging the sea, splitting the mountains and brush. She is dwarfed by the elements. From
under the passenger seat she removes Marina's pink .38. The weight of it sends a chill through her. She laughs to herself. Jesus. Why did she bother asking for this thing? Marina has two more, so she didn't hesitate when Phoebe mentioned it. She could fire it into the sky and no one would hear. Aim high, Nora, she thinks to herself.

59

P
hoebe opens an Evite and addresses it to Kostya and Marina, Mai and her husband (whose name she still doesn't know), and two of her coworkers. She checks the calendar and decides on the second Saturday in November. She calls it a holiday season party, then changes it to “just because,” then changes back to a holiday gathering, then types:
Bon Voyage
. Because that's really what it is: a going-­away party. She emails Marina separately, tells her to invite some friends. She'll tell Nick the same, to have some of his sweaty friends come by. Why not? She cranks Pandora on a Led Zeppelin station that reminds her of college. There's no one home: Jackson is at Mai's, and Nick is at the house in Sunland. She considers going. She might. She could drive out there and surprise him. They could fuck on the air mattress and she could tell him everything: precisely what she's been doing with JW and why, and that within a month, weeks, days, their lives will be their own, the way they're meant to be, if not charmed then glistening by the sea, Jackson sleeping in the orange light of spectacular sunsets.