Symptomatic Read online

  At night, I lay awake for hours listening to my body speak to me: the grumbles and aches and pricks and itches—evidence, I suspected, of a problem growing larger inside of me.

  By day I continued to call numbers I found in the classifieds and to go look at shares after work. But I found a reason to turn down each potential home. The reasons weren’t hard to find. One woman had a grizzled boyfriend who sat on the couch in boxer shorts cutting his toenails while she showed me around. Another had an alphabetized system of arranging cans on her shelves. A third, an environmentalist, told me that one of her house rules was that I couldn’t flush the toilet unless I had made a bowel movement.

  “If it’s yellow, let it mellow,” she said, smiling down into the golden toilet water. “If it’s brown, flush it down.”

  I COMPLAINED to Carlos the mailman, who stopped by my desk on his delivery route. Carlos was caramel-colored, with black wavy hair and a “Dominican Forever” tattoo on his forearm. He smelled of Drakkar Noir.

  “Am I missing something here?” I waved the classified page at him. “Other people have homes in this city. At least most of them. Where did they find them?”

  He slapped a pile of junk mail on my desk. “Welcome to the Big Shitty.”

  Carlos hated New York. Apparently, when he was a teenager in the Bronx, he had designed a T-shirt that said, in simple white letters, “Why are we here?” over a small picture of a rotten apple with a worm poking out of one side. He’d printed a hundred of them up, and sold exactly one—to his mother. He claimed he still had four boxes of them in his basement.

  Carlos wanted to move to California. He had never been there, but swore someday he would go. He was going to see “that golden bridge” before he died.

  He liked talking to me, mainly because I was from the other coast. He would loiter beside my desk, staring down at me with starstruck eyes, asking me questions about Los Angeles, paying no mind to the fact that I was from the Bay Area. How much was the rent for a one-bedroom in Malibu? What were the cool nightclubs in L.A.? Could you really find a parking spot anywhere? And his favorite subject: What famous people had I seen? He made me tell him over and over again about the time I stood in line behind Donald Sutherland at a Pep Boys.

  “I must be missing something,” I said now, resting my face in my hands, glaring down at the listings for shares. “Some secret apartment source.”

  “Don’t you know, chica?” he said with a snort. “Everything good in this stupid-assed city comes from a secret source. It’s called connections. Nothin’ random about that. You gotta know the right people.”

  “What if you don’t?”

  “You make some friends, sister,” he said, trudging out the door with his cart. “You make some friends mighty quick.”

  BURIED UNDER all the junk Carlos left was a postcard from Mombasa showing a grinning woman in traditional garb on a dirt road.

  Dear Bootsy Collins, I have lost twenty-five pounds—best diet in the world, those worms. I dreamt about you last night. Only you were Marlo Thomas on That Girl, bangs and all. You were swirling around Midtown in a trench coat, laughing your head off. Is it true? Love, Lola.

  THERE WAS A MESSAGE blinking out at me from my computer’s inbox a few days later. A fact-checker in the business department—Greta Hicks—had overheard me complaining to Carlos about my apartment search. She knew of a sublet that had just become available in Brooklyn. She told me the price and it was well within my range. Was I interested?

  We met at eight-thirty the next morning at the Au Bon Pain a block away from our office. The café was a chaos of commuters, and I stood at the door for a moment, searching for Greta among their faces. There she was, seated in the back. Forty-something. Teetering between voluptuous and overweight. Olive skin, straight dark hair streaked with a few strands of white. A faint shadow of a mustache over her lip. She was looking at herself in a compact mirror, grinning as she checked her teeth for bits of food.

  I’d met Greta before, at a brown-bag luncheon for new employees we’d both attended over the summer. There had been an unusually large influx of hires starting in July—writers, reporters, fact-checkers, and me—and they lumped us all together for the session. We spent three hours in an airless conference room, picking at stale potato chips and taking tepid bites of our turkey wraps while a stream of superiors came in to talk to us about everything from health insurance policies to journalistic ethics. I recalled feeling sorry for Greta, because she was so much older than all the rest of us. She was also overdressed in a mauve pantsuit, wore a sad red carnation on her lapel, and had the enthusiasm of an adult-education student, raising her hand at every lull to ask a question.

  At the end of the meeting we stood around in clusters, mingling, and Greta walked around handing everybody a Hershey’s Kiss. I remember appreciating the gesture, ridiculous as it was. I’d been feeling particularly uncomfortable that day—a slight chill from the other hires when they looked at my name tag with “Riggs Fellow” emblazoned boldly under my name—a chill that never quite went away. I’d felt a familiar insecurity—that I did not belong here. That, in fact, I was an impostor, that all my credentials were indeed a fiction, and any day now I would be discovered and expelled from this world. Greta, too, had seemed out of place, and so we ended up standing together while the other staffers huddled and bonded. Since then, we had passed one another in the hall, once we’d chatted by the water cooler about the weather, but as she worked in a different department, we never followed up on that initial encounter.

  Now she glimpsed me and raised her arm to wave as I approached, and I saw dark half-moons under her arms, new or old sweat, I couldn’t be sure.

  “Ah,” she said when I was in front of her. “Here she is.” She pushed a steaming paper cup in my direction. “Green tea okay?”

  “Thanks,” I said, a bit surprised. “How’d you know?”

  “Just a lucky guess. I remembered you saying you were from California.” She took a sip from her coffee cup, then sat back and smiled at me, her eyes twinkling, humorous, as if she’d just told a joke.

  “Well, finally!”

  Finally what? I was confused. “Am I late?”

  “No, no,” she shook her head. “It’s just, well, I never see you anymore. Ever since that meeting last summer, you’ve been this beige blur darting past me in the in the lobby, chasing this story or that.”

  “Maybe that’s how I look—but I’m not chasing anything good, I can assure you.”

  “Really? Well, I’m sure they’re just priming you for bigger and better things. I mean, the fellowship is a big deal. I saw that little item they ran about you this summer.”

  “Oh, that,” I said, slightly embarrassed. The staff newsletter had run a short profile during my first week, along with a goofy snapshot of me sitting behind my desk, looking slightly alarmed. It had made the Riggs Fellowship sound like a big deal, all right. I’d seen the bitterness in the other reporters’ smiles. Now I waved my hand. “All lies. Yellow journalism.”

  “Well, I’m impressed, that’s all.”

  Easily impressed. I took a sip of tea. It scalded my tongue. “Anyway,” I said, “about the apartment.”

  “Right,” she said, and paused for a moment, looking at me sideways. “So what’s the big rush? You sounded urgent when you were talking to Carlos.”

  Clearly whatever she’d overheard had made me sound desperate. I didn’t blame her for asking. She’d only met me once, really, and there were a lot of odd ducks out there in the rental market.

  I explained now, in as vague terms as I could get away with: “I moved in with a guy a few months ago, but it was too early. We didn’t know each other that well at the time.”

  She nodded, female empathy softening her features. “Ah, and now you do.”

  “Yeah, now I do.”

  “I had a feeling it was something like that. I saw you in the cafeteria the other day looking, well, pretty downcast.”

  I hadn’t known it was
that obvious, noticeable even to virtual strangers. But now that she said it, I felt a lurch of sadness—so strong I had to look away. I recalled the last meal he’d cooked for me. We’d eaten it side by side in bed, a trashy thriller flickering on the television set before us. And the indigo scarf he’d bought for me one afternoon, on a whim, during his neighborhood wanderings, just to see the color against my skin.

  “I’ll survive,” I said, trying to smile, but my face felt like hardened wax, impossible to move.

  “Of course you will!” she said, then pulled out a small slip of paper. “Now, the apartment.”

  She went into the details, something about her hairdresser’s cousin who had left town abruptly for six months. The hairdresser was supposed to water her plants and take in the mail, but he lived all the way uptown, and the apartment was in Brooklyn, and so he was hoping to rent it out cheap to somebody reliable who would be responsible and didn’t mind leaving when the girl came back. The best part was that the girl had been living in the apartment for many years under rent control, and so the rent was way below market price.

  “It’s not that far a trip to work, and from what he said, it’s a good space. It’s in a”—Greta smirked as she made quote marks—” ‘transitional neighborhood,’ so you can still get your cappuccino in the mornings. Or green tea.” Her eyes flickered to my paper cup, and she smiled. “Yes, I suppose you could even get green tea.” She paused. “But maybe you want something that’s, you know, a little more upscale.”

  I shook my head. She had the wrong idea about me. They all did. “It sounds perfect,” I said. “I’m not picky about the space, just about who I have to share it with.” I told her about a few of my recent flurry of potential roommates, and she laughed. “Oh no, we mustn’t let you end up with one of those.”

  Afterward, we walked back to the office together through the drizzle, sharing her umbrella. It was battered, loose on a few spokes, and said “Chase Manhattan” across the blue vinyl—something she’d no doubt gotten as a gift from the bank years ago. She chattered about the rental market, meaningless banter, and I tried to hold up my end of the conversation, but there was a soreness in my throat and an ache in my bones.

  We took the elevator up together. The plan was that I would call her hairdresser that evening, after she’d had a chance to talk to him. At her floor, she stood between the open doors for a moment, looking back at me. She scratched her head. “Listen, I hate to ask, but you aren’t going to have a change of heart and move back in with this guy next week, are you?” She emitted an anxious little laugh. “I mean, are you sure it’s over? For good?” She looked pained after she said it, and a flush of color came to her cheeks.

  I paused, and asked myself the same question. “Yes, I swear. It’s over for good.” It was a promise to myself as much as to her.

  “I thought so. I’m sorry I asked.”

  “No, please. It only makes sense.”

  She smiled, then touched my arm. “I’ll let Jiminy know he can trust you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.” She began to go, but turned back. “You know, it’s true what they say. Time is the only thing that heals these breakups. And you’re so young, hon. You’ve got nothing but time.”

  “I know,” I said, a little more coldly than I’d intended. She was only trying to be kind, but the aphorism felt more like a reminder of the endless solitary nights I saw stretched out before me.

  MY FAMILY WOULD NOT have approved of Andrew. The last time I brought a boy like him home, they were pleasant to his face, but later, alone with me, expressed their bewilderment.

  “What do you have to talk about?” my mother wondered as she kneaded dough at the kitchen table.

  My father, pulling weeds out of the backyard: “I didn’t know they made those anymore.”

  My brother, waxing his surfboard on the other side of the lawn: “They don’t.”

  5

  T HE APARTMENT WAS dark and empty when I got home from work.

  I didn’t turn on the lights. Instead, I went to the phone to call the number Greta had given me.

  A man answered on the fourth ring, just when I was about to hang up.

  “Yo,” he said.

  “Is this Jiminy?”

  “Yeah.”

  I told him who I was: Greta Hicks’s friend calling about the apartment.

  He paused. Inhaled something. Held it in as he said in a tight voice, “Oh. Uh-huh. She called me about you. Right. So you want it or what?”

  Did I want it? I had never seen the place. “I’m interested,” I said. “Can you describe it?”

  “Describe it? Shit, I don’t know. It’s an apartment. You know, nothing fancy, but it’ll do.”

  “How big?”

  “Um, I guess it’s about, you know, two bedrooms. Nah. One bedroom.” He sighed. “Yo, G, I can’t describe this shit. Bitch didn’t tell me I’d have to describe it. It’s chill. Real chill. And yo, you ain’t gonna find a better deal that close to Manhattan. Know what I’m sayin’, son? This ain’t no joke.”

  I’d met people like Jiminy before. The childish nickname, the exaggerated slang, the wild defensiveness were all too familiar. I also knew I had to tiptoe, because the fact was, he had something I thought I wanted. I would simply have to put up with his foolishness. For the remainder of the conversation, he continued to address me as “son” and “G.” After some hemming and hawing he agreed to let me see the space before I committed. I didn’t look forward to meeting him in person, but I reminded myself that if things worked out, I would only have to meet him once.

  We made plans for the following night, after he had finished doing hair for the day.

  I hung up and stood for a moment in the kitchen, biting a hangnail that had begun to irritate me.

  “You’re leaving me.”

  I turned. Directly ahead, through the double doors, Andrew sat in the darkened living room on the couch, watching me. It seemed strange that I had not seen him before.

  “I knew something was up.”

  I approached him slowly, sat down beside him, reached out for his hand. He pulled it away.

  “What? I don’t make you happy?” His eyes were shining.

  I raked a hand through my hair. “I—this was supposed to be temporary. Remember? Just till I found a place of my own.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me you were planning to move out?”

  I slid my hands under my thighs, rocked forward slightly. “I didn’t plan it. Somebody at work knew of a sublet. It just sort of fell into my lap today—the opportunity, so I thought I’d check it out. You know this city. You can’t sleep on these deals.”

  The words floated in the space before me, a cloud of bullshit.

  “You’re a liar,” he said. “You’ve been looking this whole time, haven’t you?”

  I didn’t answer the question. Instead, I stared out the window. In the building adjacent to Andrew’s, I could see into an apartment. A woman was sitting at her kitchen table, eating something white and gooey out of a giant mixing bowl. She had dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses and ate with what looked like a giant wooden spoon. I couldn’t see the other end of the table. She kept looking up and smiling, as if somebody was there, but for some reason I got the feeling she was alone.

  “I need to be in my own space,” I said. “Don’t take it personally. Please.”

  He looked at me. In the dark, his face looked pale as a dish, cracked down the middle. “It was the party, wasn’t it? That’s when things started changing. After that night. You didn’t like my friends.”

  I looked away, at the rug, the swirl of orientalism and dirt. I wondered what Lola was doing in Kenya right now. I imagined her squatting over a dirt hole, hoisting her buibui up around her middle while she relieved herself of worms. If she could see me now.

  I glanced up. Andrew was still waiting for an explanation.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I didn’t like your friends. I didn’t k
now enough about you. And you didn’t know enough about me either. We jumped into this too fast. We should have taken it in stages, gotten to know each other first. We should have done it in the right order.”

  “The right order,” he said. “What does that mean? Boy meets girl on a subway. It’s love at first sight, the way it only happens in the movies, the way it never happens in a city as big and brutal as this. And then one day the girl walks out without an explanation. Destroys everything for no good reason. Is that what you mean by the right order?”

  “Maybe,” I said, hugging my stomach. “Maybe that’s what I mean.”

  He rubbed his face, quite violently, as if he were trying to get something off it. Afterward he stared at me in hard silence for a while. When he finally spoke, it was to say, “You want to hear something weird? Maybe you can help me figure it out. In all the months I’ve known you, I’ve never been able to remember what you look like. Isn’t that bizarre? I used to think it was a good thing, the suspense I felt going to meet you in public—this completely irrational fear I had that I might not recognize you. But it’s something else, isn’t it?”

  I looked back out the window. The woman in the apartment was laughing now, tittering into her hand as if somebody had just told a wickedly funny joke.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  I looked back. Nodded. “Yes, you were saying my face is hard to remember.”

  He made a mocking sound in his throat, as if I’d given him the wrong answer on a quiz. Then said, “Tell me something. Is this the way it always goes with you?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve been here before.”

  He watched me for a moment, then whispered, “Who are you?”