Bend - Bromberg K.. Страница 37

On Tuesday, I take the bus to West End and Boston Commons; on Wednesday, Back Bay, and Cambridge. I spend both days walking as far as I can, grabbing job applications from every place with an opening and filling them out on the cold sidewalk, pressing my pen down on my wallet and trying to keep my trembling fingers still enough so my handwriting is readable. I get home at half past two a.m. Thursday, exhausted and trembling from hunger.

Katie pops up the next day and breezes right into the apartment, which is, accidentally, unlocked.

She looks around with horror on her face and puts her hands on her hips. “Red, what the hell?”

I’ve been found out, and I’m slightly mortified, but I shrug and play it off. “I’m moving.”

“Holy wow.” Her mouth lolls. “Just…holy.”

I twirl around the almost-empty living room with my arms out. “I’m trying to live simply.”

“Holy shit, you got evicted, didn’t you? Because Carl left you high and dry.”

“I didn’t get evicted. I’m moving.”

“In with Gage and I.”

“No way.” They live in an 800-square-foot flat and fight and fuck like a pair of rabid cats.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“Katie—”

“Then where are you going?” she demands.

“I’ve got plans.”

“You don’t, Red. Quit putting me off. You’ve been doing it for weeks now and I’m tired of turning a blind eye to this…to this crisis.”

I roll my eyes. “K, you’re totally over-reacting.”

She’s not.

My latest plan involves buying a bus ticket to Florida, where it’s always warm and I can sleep under a dock. I’ll use the free WiFi at coffee shops to apply for jobs. Maybe the Peace Corps.

So I’m surprised when I blurt out, “I’m going to see my grandmother.”

“Gertrude?”

I nod slowly. “Yeah.”

This will be the easiest way to disappear. So Katie won’t worry. I’ll find a job in Florida, find a fresh start.

Over the next few hours, I convince Katie this is true. We read Gertrude’s poems aloud, and Katie orders Chinese food, which I devour so quickly I puke it all back up once Katie leaves.

Late that night, I’m curled up on a blanket in my empty bedroom, wearing the pink iPhone ear buds I used to wear when I wrote at work. I’m lying on my back, my face striped by the streetlight streaming through my blinds. I’m listening to Lana Del Ray, surfing the internet for what will be one of the last times ever on my phone; I’ve just sold it on Craig’s List for $90.

My leg itches and I reach down to scratch it. One of my nails is jagged. I scrape my calf just a little, and it stings.

I start to sob. I tug at my hair.

“How did this happen? What the fuck is wrong with everything?”

I rip the ear buds from my ears and toss my phone down. I jump up and tug my sneakers on without socks. I stab my arms into my coat and run toward Beacon Hill, where the bar crowd’s out in full force and creepers stand in alleys with their heads lowered. The air is so cold it feels like a corporeal thing.

I continue toward Boston Commons, and when I reach the pond, I spend five bucks on skates, because why the fuck not? I skate furiously in circles, until the dim stars that wink through spindly tree branches are nothing but a blur, and the faces passing by and the strings of lights and crying of a child and icy wind that slaps my cheeks seem like slivers of some dream.

This is not my life. It cannot be my life.

I skate until my feet are numb, and by the time I make it home, my hands are so frostbitten they burn terribly.

I take a hot shower and bundle up in my blankets. I check my Facebook, my e-mail, and feel the morbid compulsion to check my bank account. I do this fanatically now, sometimes like every five minutes. I’m not sure if I’m trying to motivate or torture or…holy shit.

The page has loaded. I blink. And blink. And wipe my eyes and blink.

My heart is pounding hard. Blood roars inside my ears. This can’t be right. It just…can’t be. But there it is. In simple, sans serif font, black on a white screen underneath my bank’s emblem:

$30,377.12

I can’t believe my eyes. I must be going crazy. I log out, in, and out again. Twice. Four times. Six.

My phone vibrates: an e-mail. [email protected]

She has written only one word: “Come.”

Attached is a photocopy of a hand-drawn map, sketched with an ‘X’ on one Rabbit Island, a blip about two miles off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. At the bottom is Gertrude’s e-signature.

I’m pretty sure my “FUCK YES! HELL YES! FUCK!” is heard all through my building.

I throw my snow-damp sneakers back on and dash all the way to Fred’s Coffee & Bagels, where I order a grande latte and four extra-fattening, buttery, cinnamon-crusted bagels.

I walk slowly home to my nearly empty apartment, thanking God and sleet and smog and dirty snow for what this night has brought me. I’ve made some stupid choices, but e-mailing grandma is not one of them.

As I climb behind the wheel of my new-to-me ’04 Camry the next afternoon, I’m beaming from ear to ear. I’m going to meet my mom’s mother, and after that—or maybe before if I’m extra lucky—I’m going to find a way to end this two month dry spell.

WOLFE

I leave the island four times annually—one trip inland for each season—and that’s mostly for Trudie. Was for Trudie. She needed things on occasion, and with her bum hip, it was easier for me to get them.

After she passed, I debated ever leaving the island again. No reason to. I’ve got food and supplies. I can get Bob, my cousin and my manager, to arrange a courier to get the paintings. Maybe pay him to haul his ass down here and do it himself if he doesn’t trust a third party. Not my problem. Keeping me anonymous is Bob’s problem. Has been since we started.

The only thing that made me second-guess confinement to the island was pussy.

When I first came here four years ago, I didn’t leave for months. I started dreaming of pussy. Smelling pussy. Even tasting it. So I found Clarice, a lonely young widow in one of the row houses by the water. She likes it like I do, and she never wants to see my face.

She’s a good enough fuck. But I have to go to her. I would never bring her here. I would never bring anyone here.

I could pay for pussy. Liplocked pussy. Motor boat some discreet escort to the island. But escorts are boring.

Even Clarice—predictable, submissive Clarice—could conceivably say “no.” She could fight me if she wanted. And I need that. Need to think that maybe one day, she’ll decide to twist around and grab my hair and look into my eyes.

Without that possibility, without the chance that it could all implode, it’s not fucking worth it.

So, no escorts in motor boats.

After I’ve had some time to digest Trudie’s death and my subsequent inheritance of Rabbit Island, I decide no more Clarice, either.

I’ll find another way to deal with my dick.

Peace follows my decision. Peace: the closest thing I’d found to happiness. I think Trudie would have been glad for me.

I celebrate my vow of seclusion by wandering the forest. Pines and oaks, cypress, swampland. The island is an eighth of a mile long, and I love every fucking inch of it. I leave my cabin for two nights and pitch a tent on the boulder on the northwest side of the island. Sit beside it with my feet in the sand and listen to the whip-poor-will, to the lapping of the waves. Watch cypress branches drifting in the salty breeze. And when I can’t keep my hands still any longer, I let myself paint. A gull in the water. A squirrel on an oak. Simple shit.

The next day, I call Bob. Set up the courier.

And then three days ago, when I’m up at Trudie’s cottage, archiving her unpublished poems, the phone rings.

Trudie wasn’t a lover of technology, and she especially hated talking on the phone. In her honor, I let her archaic answering machine pick up. I wonder who the fuck has her number. The old woman was more reclusive than even me.