No One Belongs Here More Than You Read online

  And I missed her terribly.

  One evening the bus was late and a customer followed me out to the curb. He stood beside me at the bus stop and I ignored him and then he started spitting. First he spit on the pavement, then more generally in the air. I felt tiny wet specks blow onto my face and I pressed my lips together and stepped backward. He, too, stepped back, and continued to fill the air with his scattershot. His harassment relied on a logic so foreign that I felt disoriented, I couldn’t gauge whether it was terrifying or silly, and it was this feeling that told me to go back inside. I walked and then ran, slamming the door behind me. But Mr. Peeps was not exactly a safe haven, and I couldn’t stay there forever. I asked Allen to go outside and see if the customer was still there. He was. Couldn’t Allen tell him to leave? Allen felt he could not because a) he wasn’t breaking the law, and b) he was a good customer. Allen thought I should call a friend or a cab to pick me up.

  I had been waiting for this moment, and I marveled at how organically it had arisen. I usually imagined poisoning myself or getting hit by a car. Someone official, a cop or a nurse, would ask if there was anyone I wanted them to call. I would gasp her name. She works at Berryman’s Lumber and Supply, I would say. This situation was not as dire, but it involved safety, and more important, it wasn’t my idea to call her. I had been ordered, almost commanded, by a superior, Allen.

  I called Berryman’s Lumber quickly, almost distractedly, modeling myself after the kind of person who would have a question about replacement saw blades. But the moment the line began ringing, my senses dilated, winnowing out everything that was not the ring or the sound of my own heart.

  Berryman’s Lumber and Supply, how can I help you?

  I’m trying to reach Pip Greeley?

  Just a sec.

  Just a sec. Just two months. Just a lifetime. Just a sec.

  Hello?

  It’s me.

  Oh. Hi.

  This wouldn’t do. This Oh. Hi. I couldn’t be the person who elicited a response like this. I straightened my wig. I smiled into the air the way I smiled when customers unbuckled their belts, and I made my eyes laugh as if everything were some version of a good time. I began again.

  Hey, I’m in a bind here and wonder if you could help me out?

  Yeah? What?

  I’m working at this place, Mr. Peeps? And there’s this really creepy guy hanging around. Do you have a car?

  She was silent for a moment. I could almost hear the name Mr. Peeps vibrating in her head. It described a man with eyes the size of clocks. She had devoted her whole life to avoiding Mr. Peeps, and now here I was, cavorting with him. I was either repulsive and foolish, or I was something else. Something surprising. I held my breath.

  She said she guessed she could borrow a van, and could I wait twenty minutes until she got off work? I said I probably could.

  We didn’t talk in the van, and I didn’t look at her, but I could feel her looking at me many times with bewilderment. I usually changed my clothes and took off my wig before I went home, but I had been right not to do this tonight. I looked out the window for other passengers in love with their drivers, but we were well disguised, we pretended boredom and prayed for traffic. Just as her former home came into view, she made a sudden left turn and asked if I wanted to see where she lived now.

  You mean Kate’s?

  No, that didn’t work out. I’m living in this guy I work with’s basement.

  Sure.

  The basement was what is called “unfinished.” It was dirt, with a few boards thrown here and there, islands that supported a bed and some milk crates. She waved a flashlight around and said, It’s only seventy-five dollars a month.

  Really.

  Yeah, all this room! It’s over fifteen hundred square feet. I can do anything I want with it.

  She walked me between the beams, describing her plans. A toilet flushed upstairs, and I could almost see her coworker walking above us. He paused, a couch creaked, a TV was turned on. It was the news. She slipped the flashlight into a hanging loop of string, and a dim spotlight fell on her pillow. I stretched out on the bed and yawned. She stared at the length of me.

  You can stay here if you want, I mean if you’re tired.

  I might just nap.

  I have some cleaning up to do.

  You clean up, I’ll nap.

  I listened to her sweeping. She swept closer and closer, she swept all around the edges of the mattress. Then she lay down the broom and climbed into bed with me. We lay there, perfectly still, for a long time. Finally, the man upstairs coughed, which set off a wave of kinetic energy. Pip adjusted her shoulders so that the outermost edge of her T-shirt grazed my arm; I recrossed my legs, carelessly letting my ankle fall against her shin. Five more seconds passed, like heavy bass-drum beats, the three of us were motionless. Then he shifted on the couch and we instantly turned to each other, each mouth fell upon the other, our hands grabbed urgently, even painfully. It seemed necessary to be brutal at first, to mime anger and concede nothing. But once we had wrestled deep into the night and turned out the flashlight, I was surprised by her gentle attentions.

  So this was what it was like not to be me. This was who Pip was. Because, make no mistake, I kept my wig on the whole time. I believed it made all of this possible, and I think I was right. The wig and the fact that I did not cry even though I wanted desperately to cry, to tell her how miserable I had been, to squeeze her and make her promise to never leave again. I wanted her to beg me to quit my job and then I wanted to quit my job.

  But she didn’t beg, and in fact, Mr. Peeps was essential. Each night she picked me up in the Berryman Lumber van, took me under the house, and made love to me. And each morning I went home and took off my wig. I scratched my sweaty scalp and let my head breathe for two hours before getting on the bus to go to work. I lived like this for eight beautiful days. On the ninth day, Pip suggested we go out to breakfast before I went to work.

  I wish I could, but I have to go home and get ready.

  You look great.

  But I have to wash my hair.

  Your hair looks great.

  I touched my wig and laughed, but she didn’t smile.

  Really, it looks great.

  Our eyes locked, and an unfriendly feeling passed between us. Of course it was a wig—I knew she knew this—but she was suddenly determined to call my bluff. I imagined that we were dueling, delicate foils raised high.

  Okay then, let’s have breakfast.

  I can drop you off at Mr. Peeps after.

  Fine. Thank you.

  Everyone knows that if you paint a human being entirely with house paint he will live, as long as you don’t paint the bottom of his feet. It takes only a little thing like this to kill a person. I had worn the wig for almost thirty hours straight, and as I stripped and jiggled and moaned, I began to feel warm, overly warm. By midday, sweat was running down the sides of my face, but the men just kept coming, it was a day of incredible profits. Allen even patted me on the back as I left, saying, Good work, champ. Pip was waiting in the van, but the walk across the parking lot felt long and strange. I thought I recognized a customer crouching by his car, but no, it was just a normal man huddled over something in a cage. He murmured, That’s right, we’re going to take you home.

  Pip put me right to bed and even borrowed a thermometer from her coworker upstairs. But she did not suggest I take off my wig, and in my fever I understood what this meant. I saw her in the clearing with a pistol and I knew without even looking that my hands were empty. But I could win by pretending to have a pistol. If I said bang and let her shoot me, I would win. If I died this way, as Gwen, would the rest of me still go on living? And what was the rest of me? I fell asleep with this question and tunneled through the night ripping at the knotted strands until the wig came off. I didn’t put it on in the morning, and Pip didn’t ask how I was feeling; she could see I was fine. She didn’t offer to drive me to work, and we both knew she wouldn’t be there to pi
ck me up.

  I sat in the green plastic chair under the fluorescent lights. It was an extraordinarily slow day. It seemed that all the men in the world were too busy to masturbate. I imagined them out there doing virtuous things, solving crimes and teaching their children how to do cartwheels. It was the last hour of my eight-hour shift, and I had not given a single show. It was almost eerie. I watched the clock and door and began to place bets between them. If no customers came for me in the next fifteen minutes, I would yell Allen’s name. Fifteen minutes passed.

  Allen!

  What.

  Nothing.

  There were only twenty minutes left now. If no one came in the next twelve minutes, I would yell the word “I,” as in me, myself, and. After seven minutes, the door dinged and a man came in. He bought a video and left.

  I!

  What?

  Nothing.

  It was the final eight. If no customers came in, I would yell the word “quit.” As in no more, enough, I’m going home. I stared at the door. It threatened to open with each breath I took, with each passing minute. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.

  I Kiss a Door

  Now that I know, it seems so obvious. Suddenly, there is nothing I remember that doesn’t contain a clue. I remember a beautiful blue wool coat with flat silver buttons. It fit her perfectly, it even gripped her.

  Where did you find that coat?

  My father bought it for me.

  Really? It’s so cool.

  It just arrived this morning.

  He picked it out? How did he know how to pick something so cool?

  I don’t know.

  It seemed unfair that Eleanor should be so pretty and the lead singer of the best band and have a dad who sent amazing coats from expensive stores that were tailored to her exact measurements. My father didn’t send me anything, but he called me sometimes to ask if I could give him a job.

  I’m a waitress.

  But what about the person who works under the waitress?

  The busboy?

  Yeah!

  We don’t have busboys. I bus the tables.

  You could subcontract out to me; it would save you a lot of time.

  Look, I can’t send you money.

  Did I ask for money? I asked for work!

  I just can’t do it right now.

  I don’t want money; I want a meaningful path in life!

  I have to go.

  Just fifty dollars. I’ll pay the wire fee.

  When Shy Panther played at the Lyceum, Eleanor’s dad came out to see her, and I got to meet him. He was incredibly handsome, commandingly so. She was mute around him, and to be honest, she seemed less interesting when he was there. Such that when she stepped out on the stage, her tiny presence was almost presumptuous, as in: how had she ever imagined anyone would want to listen to her. She sang,

  He looks like a door

  He tastes like a door

  And when I kiss him

  I kiss a door

  Her trademark monotone, her famous lack of stage presence—that night they were nothing. She wasn’t cool. She was the odd girl in class, forced to recite. I watched her from backstage, standing next to her father, wondering if he was pressing his arm against my arm or if I was imagining it. Yes, I was flirting with him, not just then but all night. He told me something I still tell myself every day. He said: Men are turned on by women who are taller than them. But now I know better, and I preface the sentence with “in heaven.” In heaven men are turned on by women who are taller than them. And all the dogs that died are alive again. When the night was over, Eleanor and her dad dropped me off at my apartment and I felt jealous and confused, as if he had chosen her over me. Only it wasn’t clear like this, I’m psychoanalyzing with hindsight.

  By the time Thunderheart came out, I wasn’t friends with her anymore. Not because of that night but because I slept with Marshall. He wasn’t her boyfriend, I told myself this as I kissed the front of his jeans, but I knew she thought of both the boys in the band as hers. His penis was long and curved down, so that I could fuck him by lying on his back and pulling it up between his legs into me. This sounds impossible, but it’s true. You would understand it better if I drew a diagram.

  Have you done it like this before? I asked him.

  No.

  You’re lying!

  No, I didn’t even know it was possible.

  So I taught you something! Now you can do it all the time like this.

  Yeah. I think it might be the kind of thing that’s better for the girl.

  Really? Oh God, sorry. Do you want to stop?

  Well, are you about to get off or anything?

  I think I could.

  Okay, that’s fine. Take your time.

  No, actually, I can’t. Let’s switch places.

  It was Marshall who told me about Eleanor. I hadn’t seen him for over a year, and in the meantime I had met Jim, and I think I might have even been pregnant with April. He told me everything while we were standing in the soul aisle of Spillers.

  She’s living with her parents? Why?

  Not her parents, he said, just her dad. They’re divorced.

  But why? Is she okay?

  Well, no, obviously not, since she’s living with him.

  Is she sick?

  No. Did you ever meet her dad?

  Yeah, at the Lyceum show.

  Then you know about him.

  What.

  How he’s in love with her.

  What?

  Jesus, you didn’t know that?

  What?

  He divorced her mom to be with her. That’s why she lived in Lampeter during high school.

  That’s not why.

  That is why. They lived together as a couple while she went to high school.

  I can’t believe this. No, she would have told me.

  I’m sorry.

  Why didn’t she tell me?

  I’m sorry.

  Oh God. She’s living with him? Is it like that?

  I don’t know. No one has talked to her.

  But probably, right?

  Yeah, probably.

  When I bring out the record now, it is like a sword, or a hammer. Thunderheart. It is the one amazing piece of evidence of her self. Her very own self, sung in the only voice she had, a voice that she somehow decided was good enough. The band was together for two years; those were the only years she lived on her own, apart from her father. And as far as I know, Marshall and Sal were the only two people she ever told. It is as if she came up from hell to make this one thing, a record, and then she went back. But who am I to say. Maybe it wasn’t hell. Maybe she really wanted to go back. Marshall tells me they are still together; they live in Milford Haven. He played a show in Cardiff and she came. When he asked if she was still singing, she laughed and said: Still? You flatter me.

  The Boy from Lam Kien

  I took twenty-seven steps and then I stopped. Next to the juniper bush. Lam Kien Beauty Salon was before me, and my front door was behind me. It’s not agoraphobia, because I am not actually afraid of leaving the house. The fear hits about twenty-seven steps away from the house, right around the juniper bush. I have studied it and determined that it is not a real bush, and I have reversed this theory, and I have done everything I can not to turn around and go home, even if it means standing there forever. I was eating some of the inedible juniper berries when the door of Lam Kien opened and a little boy stepped out. Perhaps Lam Kien’s son, Billy Kien. Or maybe Lam Kien was not a name at all but a translation of the words “beauty salon,” or “nails ’n’ such.” Young Kien remained by the door, and I stayed in my twenty-seventh step. He seemed to be waiting for me to move forward. Weren’t we all. When it became clear that this was never going to happen, he yelled out to me.

  I have a dog!

  I nodded. What’s his name?

  The boy looked sad for a moment, and I realized he did not actually have a dog. I felt honored to be chosen as the perso
n who believed he had a dog. I was the right woman for this job; he had chosen well to choose me. Finally, he yelled out, Paul!, and I dutifully imagined Paul: running with the boy, loving the boy, the boy feeding Paul.

  Do you have a dog? Paul’s owner asked, walking toward me and stopping in a place where he might get hit by a car.

  Don’t stand in the street.

  He walked over to me, stood before me, did not judge me.

  Do you have any pets? he asked.

  No.

  Not even a cat?

  No.

  Why not?

  I’m not sure I could care for a pet. I travel a lot.

  But you could get a very little pet that wasn’t very hungry.

  I knew all about those things that weren’t very hungry; my life was full of them. I didn’t want any more weaklings who were activated by water and heat but had no waste and were so small that when they died, I buried them only with forgetfulness. If I was going to bring something new into my home, it would be a big starving thing. But I could not do this. I didn’t tell the boy, because I was just his dog-believer.

  What kind of pet do you suggest for me?

  A tadpole.

  But this will grow up to be a frog. I can’t have a frog in my house, hopping all over the place.

  Oh, no, it won’t, it’s little! But you’ll need an aquarium.

  But it will become a frog.

  No, it won’t! That’s another kind of fish.

  What kind?

  A minnow.

  I let it go. Inside me, next to the place where the boy played with his dog, there was now an aquarium holding one tiny tadpole with no appetite. It swam back and forth, feeling perpetually ready to hop, ready for the air on its back, ready for tremendous, fantastic change. It swam forever and Paul never died, but the boy and I were changing even as we stood together. The boy was growing bored and this was a form of growing up. I was getting depressed and this was my own fault. It was a beautiful day and someone was talking to me of his own free will. But I could see the end in sight: the boy’s shirt had cartoon characters on it and the cartoon characters were leaning away from me, they were taking a step back as the boy stepped forward. He stood right in front of me and pinched my arm and said, Can I see your room?