Sliding Past Vertical Read online

  The third and final day was turning into a late one. At nine, the cute little Macintosh that the publisher had purchased to run out makeshift camera-ready art crashed. Three people frowned over the brand-new toy, a variety of manuals spread over the desk. Since Sarah hadn’t had dinner break yet, she took advantage of the downtime to get something to eat. It was a dodgy neighborhood, and she’d already been to the pizza place downstairs twice, so she was glad to find a nearby deli still open. She paced the two Lilliputian aisles of overpriced grocery and pharmaceutical items while waiting for her pastrami on rye with coleslaw. Partly from boredom, partly to exercise her eyes after so many hours of close work, she scanned from the front of the store to the back, checking out all the labels, boxes, and bottles. They had cookies she’d never heard of. Weird things like pipe cleaners and poker chips. And never in her life had she learned so much about the proper dosages of Alka-Seltzer.

  “You want mustard?” the kid at the counter said. His pale chicken arms stuck out of baggy T-shirt sleeves. He didn’t look old enough to be up this late, let alone staring at the magazine Sarah caught him looking at when she came in.

  “Um, yeah, I guess.”

  He’d left the magazine face down on the back counter, but there were more in the display stand near the cash register, where Sarah waited with a crumpled bill. She recognized most of the magazines’ names. Emerson had mentioned them, summarizing and sanitizing their various editorial contents. The one in front, the one Em’s stories were published in most frequently, had had its paper wrapping torn away. The girl on the cover was draped over a motorcycle. She wore sunglasses, a pair of black chaps, and a smile.

  Sarah felt bad that the girl was made to pose that way. It looked unnatural and silly at best, painful at worst: all that cold, hard steel and impossible angles. But then, like Em always said, the model was over eighteen, nobody put a gun to her head, and she probably got paid a lot of money. Sarah pitied the men who bought the magazines. Settling for a two-dimensional stranger in the middle of the night must be awfully lonely. She felt sorry for Emerson, too, feeding into the big, sad machine where women were only valued for their bodies and men’s insecurities were exploited.

  “It’s just another form of literature,” Em once told her. “Like Ivanhoe or Tom Sawyer. The reader lives vicariously through a character’s adventures. How is this really different?”

  “Tom Sawyer didn’t get it on with Becky Thatcher while Injun Joe watched.”

  Sarah knew he’d been rationalizing for her. She didn’t really mind his avocation that much, as long as she never showed up as any of the anonymous, big-breasted bimbos Emerson said his protagonist, Dirk Blade, used and tossed aside like fast food wrappers.

  The kid was busy at the slicer, his bony back to Sarah, knobby elbow flexing. She slid the magazine out of the rack and, heart racing, flipped to the table of contents. There he was. She read: When I went to the 7-Eleven last night, I never thought I’d get—

  “You want a pickle with that?” the kid asked.

  Sarah jumped, giving herself a paper cut as she whipped the magazine closed. “Ow. What?”

  “Pickle. You want a pickle with the pastrami?”

  “Uh. No.” She pressed a tissue from her pocket to the bleeding cut on her palm. “No thanks.”

  “Anything else?”

  Unable to meet the kid’s eyes, she bought the magazine, too.

  * * * * *

  She tossed the magazine into her purse and didn’t remember it until the subway ride home. It was the twelve thirty train, last run of the night. Among her fellow travelers were a smattering of late-shifters, college kids, and yuppies who hadn’t wanted to give up a good parking space when they went out partying after work. Sarah sat alone on a two-person bench, her back to the window, legs across the seat. Her curiosity won out and she fiddled with the magazine inside her bag, like a photographer changing film, opening to his page to continue where she’d left off.

  As she read about the potential conquest Dirk eyed—some mini-skirted cashier coyly offering flashes of her red panties—revulsion welled up inside her. It was crass, cruel, and…horribly written. This couldn’t be from Emerson’s typewriter. She took another gander at the byline. Dirk Blade. Yep, that’s him, all right.

  She read on, although she really didn’t want to. After coercing the cashier in the empty 7-Eleven to lock the door, there was more buildup, and then it dissolved into a parade of body parts, with lots of violent verbs and imagery. Soon Dirk was zipping up and out the door with a free burrito, leaving the girl an undone, quivering, and (most likely) unsatisfied heap on the Slurpee machine. The son of a bitch. The cashier would probably get fired.

  “Whatcha got there, girlie?” a voice said.

  She looked up. A toothless man a few seats behind her leered at her bag. Part of the magazine hung out—a full-page picture of the woman from the cover, just as scantily dressed, bent over a car engine, touching herself. Sarah wanted to smash her bag over his head. He was behind this: him, and all the other men who liked this stuff. If not for them, publishers wouldn’t print it. If not for them, Emerson wouldn’t have to write it. Not just for the lonely men in the middle of the night but for the sick ones, too.

  “Leave me alone.” Sarah stuffed the magazine back into her bag.

  “Just wanted a little peek, goddamnit.” He reeked of alcohol. A brown stain trailed from the corner of his mouth and disappeared into a ragged white beard.

  Just then the T pulled up to her stop. “Leave me alone!” She bolted for the door.

  He grunted and gave her an obscene gesture but didn’t follow. Still, she looked for him over her shoulder. Every noise, every twig broken underfoot, every stone kicked along the sidewalk was some man stalking her.

  She heard his voice: Whatcha got, girlie?

  She saw the toothless leer and her mind spun up memories of men who’d yelled rude things at her on the street, of drunken college boys who tried touching her at parties. And, most recently, of Dirk Blade, with his European briefs and lava lamp and polyester sneer. He was to blame.

  * * * * *

  “I don’t like you very much right now,” Sarah said to Emerson. He’d made the mistake of calling her shortly after she arrived home, only wanting to know how the job had gone. The magazine was still in her bag. She’d almost tossed it into the first trashcan she saw but hadn’t wanted any man to find it.

  “Did I do something wrong? I know it’s late, but you said your roommate worked second shift on—”

  “I just met Dirk.”

  Silence.

  “He should die,” Sarah added.

  “Which…” Emerson cleared his throat. “Which one did you read?”

  “The Slurpee machine.”

  He sounded relieved.

  Sarah wasn’t. “There are worse ones?”

  “Sarah…” He began the literature spiel, which she immediately interrupted.

  “Don’t you dare try to rationalize your way out of this, Emerson McCann. This has nothing to do with literature. It doesn’t even belong on the same planet as literature. It’s crude, it’s tacky, and it’s misogynistic…not to mention the writing…”

  “What’s wrong with the writing?”

  Of course that would get his attention. “You disappointed me, Em. Yeah, the sex thing…well, I can live with that, I guess, but I thought you—especially you—would do it with a little flair.”

  “You didn’t appreciate the subtlety of the metaphors?”

  She fought back a smile. “That’s what you were going for? Subtle?”

  “Please. My editors wouldn’t know subtle if it ran up to them screaming and beat them with a very large stick.”

  She tried but couldn’t stifle a giggle. This was the Emerson she knew. The one who sent roses and mushy cards and made her laugh. The other one…scared her.

  Apparently she was thinking about this other Emerson for too long because he filled the silence. “You know it’s not really me
,” he said softly. “He’s…just a character. My editor and the readers like him, so I write to suit and get paid for it. I never have, never would treat a woman that way. You know that. You have to know that.”

  She let out a long breath. She knew that. Emerson was sweet and romantic, and he’d never leave a girl stranded atop a Slurpee machine. He’d help her down, clean her up, and probably marry her. And he’d never write about Sarah. He’d said it a million times. “I know,” she said. “It just…hit me the wrong way, I guess.”

  Maybe because the girl in the story looked a little like her.

  Chapter 8

  Emerson prided himself on his honesty but allowed what he considered…certain lies of kindness. That a patient, ill in winter, would live long enough to feed the ducks in the spring. That his mother wasn’t to blame for what happened to Thomas. And that he never wrote about Sarah.

  He puzzled over that last lie the next afternoon while he mopped the sunroom in the infirmary. There had been other women. He’d had adventures. He’d even fallen in love again since Sarah, at eighteen, had changed her mind about him and moved on to other, less complicated men. Yet when he sat behind his typewriter and mentally slipped into Dirk’s leather jacket, it was Sarah behind the checkout counter and later, her body beneath his sweaty palms.

  Since in his opinion, honesty was the core of good writing, even when it was by the word, barely edited, and not what he wanted to be doing for the rest of his life, Emerson put his heart and soul and lust into it. He put Sarah into it. His heart. His soul. His lust. But because for the past eleven years she had offered him nothing more than friendship, a state he’d become attached to and did not want to lose, he had learned to balance honesty with sensitivity. So he could, with a semi-clear conscience, say it was not Sarah in those stories. He normally pored over his first drafts and changed certain key details. Made her blonde. Made her twins. Made her a biker chick with tattoos and a nipple ring. Whatever he hadn’t used in a while. With the Slurpee machine story he’d been careless. Or reckless. He wasn’t sure.

  He squeezed the mop through the wringer and tackled another section of the sunroom. A good time to do it, he thought, with most of the ambulatory patients downtown for a matinee revival of Guys and Dolls at the Landmark Theater. Emerson was grateful for the relative calm. He could finish a task without interruption, catch up on his paperwork, and give some attention to those who had been left behind. He paused for a moment to admire the wet gleam of the checkered linoleum floor. He’d get to the rest of it later. In the far corner by the windows, a new arrival named Charlie Fitzpatrick had been dozing on and off for the better part of an hour on an inclined gurney, hooked up to various pieces of mobile equipment, and Emerson didn’t want to disturb him.

  The sun peeked out from behind a cloud and showed Emerson a spot he’d missed near a potted palm, a few feet from Charlie. He dabbed the mop into the bucket, pulled it through the wringer, and quietly trailed the rolling contraption along the dry walkway he’d left, having learned years ago never to mop himself, or anyone else, into a corner.

  “You need to get over here?” Charlie croaked out, waking from another catnap. He batted at his various tubes with withered hands as if he’d just woken up from surgery for the first time. The IV stand began to list.

  “No…no.” Emerson caught the stand before it fell. “I’ll get to it later. You just relax.”

  “Good.” Charlie gazed out the window, a corner of his mouth turning up. “’Cause I kinda like it over here.”

  Emerson followed Charlie’s line of vision to the duck pond outside the window. One of the interns, a curvaceous redhead, was bent over Mrs. Nickerson in her wheelchair, helping her feed the ducks.

  Emerson mentally rolled his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Just this once, I’ll let you stay.”

  “Good man.” Charlie coughed, wheezed a little, and settled down. “You got a name?”

  “Emerson.”

  Charlie cocked his head.

  He was accustomed to explaining. “Like Ralph Waldo. My mother had great aspirations for us, I guess. She named my brother after Dylan Thomas.”

  “Who the hell’s that?”

  The irony cut at him, that Dylan Thomas had been his brother’s namesake.

  “A famous drunk.”

  No response.

  “The poet. You know. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night,’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales…”

  “Huh. Yeah. I know the guy.” Charlie turned back to his view of the intern. “Will you look at that ass?”

  She has a name, Emerson wanted to say but just sighed.

  “Tell you what, Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Charlie’s gaze was still riveted out the window. “When I get all this crap off me, you gotta take me out there to feed them ducks.”

  Chapter 9

  Dee Dee’s parting salvo, before leaving for the hospital, was to tell Sarah she would stand a better chance of getting a job if she did something with her hair. And that she could throw a pillowcase over Petie’s cage if he got too chirpy.

  Sarah wished it were as easy to silence Dee Dee.

  She leaned back against the couch and closed her eyes. The phone sat in her lap, her hand resting on the receiver. Around her lay a scatter of several newspapers’ “help wanted” sections, various ads circled in red pen. Cicadas droned. Cars slid down her narrow street. The kitchen clock had never been so loud. Their blinds did nothing to hold back the shimmering bloat of August. It was nine thirty and already the backs of her knees were damp.

  She missed Jay’s apartment, with its central air and lack of roommates. The least he could have done in return for holding his stuff would be to invite her to sleep over these past few suffocating nights. What were the odds of someone breaking in a third time?

  He was probably practicing and wouldn’t get the phone, but she left a message reminding him he’d left something at her place. Then circled two more ads, pecked out a cover letter on Dee Dee’s typewriter, and put a résumé in an envelope.

  He didn’t call back.

  She picked up one of the papers and reread the article about the fire. Not yesterday’s Globe, where the evidence had already surfaced, and a lurid picture showed Jimmy being led away in handcuffs. But the Brookline paper, a weekly, where the cause of the blaze had not yet been determined. Where a Copy King employee, identified by name, admitted in a police statement to leaving a certain old and faulty piece of equipment plugged in because she was in a hurry to return a videotape and meet her boyfriend.

  Moron, Sarah thought.

  Jimmy, too.

  The parakeet stirred, chirped a few times, realized no one gave a damn, and stopped.

  Needing something to do, she decided to evaluate her interview clothes. She didn’t remember the last time she’d worn her one good suit and one pair of sensible, business-like shoes, and she wanted to make sure they were still in decent shape, on the off chance someone might actually want to interview her.

  But knowing what else was in her closet stopped her cold.

  At first, she tried hiding Jay’s Baggie in her underwear drawer. But every time she reached for a pair of panties, it reminded her what a sucker she’d been and of the risk she’d agreed to take for him. She didn’t need any additional pressure from her underthings. So she stuffed his stash into an orphaned sweat sock and hid it behind the other refugees in her closet: boxes of Emerson’s letters, bags of slightly snagged pantyhose, and her mother’s hand-me-downs.

  So far, the strategy seemed to be working. She went in there less often. But sometimes she got curious. Except for the occasional joint in college, she’d never seen any drugs up close, and the temptation had been growing to touch the white powder, smell it, and feel the texture between her fingertips.

  What kept her from it, mainly, was the fear that she’d spill it into the carpet. Or sneeze, like in Annie Hall. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars, gone.

  She went back into her room and wiggled a hand through the jun
k in her closet until she found it. Her fingers closed around the shifting ball in the toe of the sock. Maybe it was from the heat, or boredom, or her own imagination, but she swore it felt electric. That it had a pulse, like a living heart. Or that it was a hand grenade, missing its pin.

  “Get it out of here,” she told Jay’s machine, “or I’m flushing it down the toilet.”

  * * * * *

  Twenty minutes later, unshaven and untucked, he was at her door.

  “I hope you didn’t do anything stupid,” he said.

  She gave him an icy stare, turned, and let him follow her toward her room. “I think it would have been one of the smarter things I could have done.”

  “You agreed to hold it for me.”

  She spun to face him. “On the condition you were getting it out of here soon.”

  He threw up his hands. “The guy hasn’t called yet. He’s supposed to call.”

  Petie went crazy, chattering and hopping on his little wire trapeze. Sarah ignored the stupid thing. “Your friend has a lousy memory, so it becomes my problem?”

  He worked his mouth into a sneer. “You’re turning into a real bitch, you know that?”

  “Well, pardon me for not being deliriously happy. I’m broke, my only job reference is a felon, and I’ve got a sock full of cocaine in my closet. I’m not having a good week.”

  Jay grinned. Other people’s crimes delighted him. They seemed to make his own more excusable. “Boss-man torched the shop?”

  “Shut up.” She looked away, angry with herself—Jimmy’s biggest defender—for being the one to say it first.

  “So you’re off the hook.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Is he going to jail?”

  “Jay…”