clothes in a store:
Here you go, miss, the size you wanted
.
In his turtle-ish hand he holds a pair of faded jeans. No underwear, but this is not a store. This is not her room. This is not the day before. When she lets the folded jeans fall open, the smell of mildew plumes, but it’s just the scent of towels that have been folded still wet. How she’d hated that smell back when she was stupid! When she could throw a sour towel back into the dirty clothes basket unused.
Thisbe studies a grayish rag balled up and dry in the tiny stall shower. Fossilized there. She picks it up and holds it to the showerhead, creaks the handle. Only a trickle of water spills out.
“What are you doing, Julia?” the man asks.
“Wathing.”
“The shower doesn’t work right.”
She can see that. But there’s a little water, a shard of old soap. She uses it and puts on the old jeans. It’s not good but it’s better.
When she leaves the bathroom, he holds the duct tape and strips of cloth. The knife is right beside him on the table.
He says he’s sorry to tape her wrists again, but he isn’t sorry. The tears she meant not to cry are oozing out of her eyes again. “It will all come back,” he says, “and then we’ll be together again, like we used to be,” and she stiffens with the fear that the man used to have sex with Julia. Only when she’s lying once again in the aft cabin behind the locked door does she permit herself to move her hands against each other to see if the tape can be stretched this time.
In the silence she hears water. Lapping, flowing, lapping. The water might be moving around the boat or the boat might be moving through the water. If they’re sailing, how far have they gone? How many miles a day, and for how many days? An engine starts, then sputters, starts again, and holds. All she can see through the porthole is sky, and the sky is blue-green, a trick of the glass or the time of day, she can’t tell, so she rubs her wrists together slowly, the way you might rub the edge of a bandage that has been glued to your skin for too long, the way she used to rub the stickers on the spines of library books that said, in red letters,
14-Day Book,
knowing that eventually the edge of the sticker would dry up and curl away because she couldn’t let it alone.
J erome dropped his tennis bag by the front door, where it basically blocked the whole entrance to the kitchen, as his mother had many times pointed out, and took Maddy out on her leash. The sun on his skin was perfect, dry but not hot, weather his mother said he should learn to appreciate because his dad was emphasizing small liberal arts colleges now, especially DePauw. Friendly coach, full scholarship, midwestern values, his dad’s relatives within range for dinner, especially Thanksgiving, because it would be too far to come home, and never mind that it was Division III, which just meant, according to his dad, that Jerome could play every match and win some. Jerome knew the truth was he hadn’t panned out. At ten he had seemed headed for the highest high-holy teams, the kind his dad hadn’t been able to play on, but the better Jerome got and the higher he climbed in the rankings, the more kids he faced who practiced like he practiced and played like he played, who had also been competing, since six or eight or ten, for the highest high-holy teams, and who maybe had something he didn’t.
The text that came through as Maddy sniffed a telephone pole said, Jerome?
He didn’t want to answer it or even show that he was there. He let Maddy go to the end of the extending cord and then tugged her back. He typed, Who’s this?
Thisbes sister Ted.
He allowed part of himself, a small part, to hope that Thisbe’s sister, who thought he was a beast, was texting him secret information about Thisbe, who regretted her association with Clay and was in love with Jerome, spent her nights crying about it, actually, and Ted wanted Jerome to know that.
Hi , he
Here you go, miss, the size you wanted
.
In his turtle-ish hand he holds a pair of faded jeans. No underwear, but this is not a store. This is not her room. This is not the day before. When she lets the folded jeans fall open, the smell of mildew plumes, but it’s just the scent of towels that have been folded still wet. How she’d hated that smell back when she was stupid! When she could throw a sour towel back into the dirty clothes basket unused.
Thisbe studies a grayish rag balled up and dry in the tiny stall shower. Fossilized there. She picks it up and holds it to the showerhead, creaks the handle. Only a trickle of water spills out.
“What are you doing, Julia?” the man asks.
“Wathing.”
“The shower doesn’t work right.”
She can see that. But there’s a little water, a shard of old soap. She uses it and puts on the old jeans. It’s not good but it’s better.
When she leaves the bathroom, he holds the duct tape and strips of cloth. The knife is right beside him on the table.
He says he’s sorry to tape her wrists again, but he isn’t sorry. The tears she meant not to cry are oozing out of her eyes again. “It will all come back,” he says, “and then we’ll be together again, like we used to be,” and she stiffens with the fear that the man used to have sex with Julia. Only when she’s lying once again in the aft cabin behind the locked door does she permit herself to move her hands against each other to see if the tape can be stretched this time.
In the silence she hears water. Lapping, flowing, lapping. The water might be moving around the boat or the boat might be moving through the water. If they’re sailing, how far have they gone? How many miles a day, and for how many days? An engine starts, then sputters, starts again, and holds. All she can see through the porthole is sky, and the sky is blue-green, a trick of the glass or the time of day, she can’t tell, so she rubs her wrists together slowly, the way you might rub the edge of a bandage that has been glued to your skin for too long, the way she used to rub the stickers on the spines of library books that said, in red letters,
14-Day Book,
knowing that eventually the edge of the sticker would dry up and curl away because she couldn’t let it alone.
J erome dropped his tennis bag by the front door, where it basically blocked the whole entrance to the kitchen, as his mother had many times pointed out, and took Maddy out on her leash. The sun on his skin was perfect, dry but not hot, weather his mother said he should learn to appreciate because his dad was emphasizing small liberal arts colleges now, especially DePauw. Friendly coach, full scholarship, midwestern values, his dad’s relatives within range for dinner, especially Thanksgiving, because it would be too far to come home, and never mind that it was Division III, which just meant, according to his dad, that Jerome could play every match and win some. Jerome knew the truth was he hadn’t panned out. At ten he had seemed headed for the highest high-holy teams, the kind his dad hadn’t been able to play on, but the better Jerome got and the higher he climbed in the rankings, the more kids he faced who practiced like he practiced and played like he played, who had also been competing, since six or eight or ten, for the highest high-holy teams, and who maybe had something he didn’t.
The text that came through as Maddy sniffed a telephone pole said, Jerome?
He didn’t want to answer it or even show that he was there. He let Maddy go to the end of the extending cord and then tugged her back. He typed, Who’s this?
Thisbes sister Ted.
He allowed part of himself, a small part, to hope that Thisbe’s sister, who thought he was a beast, was texting him secret information about Thisbe, who regretted her association with Clay and was in love with Jerome, spent her nights crying about it, actually, and Ted wanted Jerome to know that.
Hi , he
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