He asks if I can meet with him today to deliver them. He reminds me that there’s still no hot water. As if this would inure me to his request.
In the mirror my face cracks open into a smile of genuine amusement. My eyes are blood-shot but my lips stretch wide with glee and then I’m laughing.
It feels good.
Deleting the text feels even better, and when I go to my contacts and delete him entirely, I feel a floating sensation in my arms.
I pull my rumpled sweatshirt out from the tub and throw it on.
Surveying our collective possessions, the threadbare couch, the stained mattress, stray clothes and books and the milk crate of records, I feel peaceful. Finally, nothing is missing.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop hurting myself in this way, but I don’t want to keep doing it for Jeremy’s sake or anyone like him ever again.
I fish my coat out from the tub by a sleeve as the folded-up pamphlet from Gina hits the floor. I clutch the sink, steadying myself as I pick it up, seeing stars as blood rushes into my body and out of my head.
I unfold it and read.
The air is redolent with the smell of flowers. I’ve emptied both spray bottles of Ylang Ylang shower cleaner. The mattress is suffused with it. Couch, too. I lift sofa cushions and crop dust the springs. I darken all of Jeremy’s clothes with layered mists of the fragrance that makes him gag.
I hitch the box of records on my hip with my coat slung over it and a bag of books at my shoulder.
I lock the door and slide my key under. My regards to David Buxbaum. Regards to the management company that I couldn’t find online to fix the heat or the water, no matter how many monthly TexStar bank checks I dutifully sent to a P.O. box in Canastota, New York.
I carry the box of Jeremy’s precious vinyl out to the curb. An offering to the New York City sanitation system should they have an interest.
* * *
I’m at June’s door. Again. With nowhere else to go. She’s on the couch watching TV in her pink bathrobe. My sister has a white Korean sheet mask on her face, head tilted awkwardly toward me so as not to drip. She looks like a Japanese Noh theater actor with pancake makeup. “Is it possible that I’m still drunk from last night?” she asks. Gilmore Girls plays in the background.
I check the time. Absurdly it’s just 8:30 in the evening, of a day that seems to have so many days nested into it. I dump my bag and shoes.
“I have to talk to you,” I begin.
She sits up as I take my place on the love seat.
“Wait,” she says, and tosses a foil package from the coffee table onto my lap. “If this is serious, you have to wear one too. I have another ten minutes.”
I pick up the envelope. It features a tasteful macro shot of flora with dew droplets on it. I flip the pink packet over to read the back.
“Wait, this one has actual stem cells in it?” I ask her, picturing microscopic bits of fetus. “Is that legal?”
“Apparently snail serum is passé,” she says, shrugging. “This is the hot new shit.”
“Can I just have five minutes and then I’ll put it on?” I’ve been practicing my speech the whole way over.
Her masked face nixes it.
I tear the package to extract the slimy white parcel and unfold it. Gingerly so I don’t drip on the couch or on my clothes. I carefully peel the mask off its plastic backing and position it onto my face, matching it up to my hairline. It’s cold and unpleasantly wet. I dock the holes over my eyes, nose, and mouth, pulling errant strands of hair out from under it.
“You got to wipe the remaining serum onto your neck and hands,” she instructs. “This shit is like twenty bucks a pop. Everyone’s using it post-op. It promotes healing.”
“Wait,” I tell her, reaching for another pink packet. “Open your robe for a second.”
Once I get the mask unfolded, I slap it onto her belly.
“Holy!” exclaims June with a laugh in her throat. “It’s fucking cold.”
“Can’t hurt.” Maybe it will absorb deep inside her. The face on June’s torso looks up at me as her slimy pancake face looks down.
“So, what were you going to tell me?” June tightens the fuzzy belt of her robe.
“I need a place to stay.”
“Yeah, dingus, I know,” she says. “You’ve been literally living with me for almost a month.”
“Yeah, but…”
June picks at the edge of her mask and peels it off. Her face is slick, her baby hairs clinging to her forehead.
I reach for mine, but she sucks her teeth in reproach. “You have at least another fifteen.”
I peel it off anyway and hold it in my hands. Warmed by my face, the wetness makes it feel vaguely alive. “I’ll put it back on,” I tell her. “I just need to actually see you.”
“Okay.”
“I have to move out of my apartment.”
“Also, to file under, ‘criminally obvious.’？”
“June!”
“I’m sorry,” she says, eyes wide with impatience. “I’m waiting for the part I don’t know.”
“Well,” I barrel on. “It’s filled with roaches, there’s sometimes no water at all for days, and the heat’s going to kill me if the cold doesn’t. You asked me a long time ago if I was on the lease.” I shoot a sidelong glance at her neck roll. “Anyway, I’m not. It’s an illegal sublet and I’ve tried to make it work, but I failed. I can’t do it. I’m a huge fuckup and I left for good and I need to stay with you for a while.”
“Okay,” she says evenly. “How long would you need?”
“Two months.”
“Is that a real number or is it the longest you figured you could get away with asking for?”
Fuck, she knows me so well. “The second one.”
“You can stay here as long as you want,” she says. “But you have to do something for me.”
She reaches under her robe, plucks the face mask off her tummy, and flings it onto the coffee table.
“You need to quit doing the shit you’re doing,” she says quietly, crossing her arms.
The inky horrible feeling drops over me again.
“What are you talking…”
“Stop,” she says, raising her hand. “You can’t lie to me if you’re going to live here. I know when you leave. When you go back to your apartment and what you do. And if you can’t do it there, you’re going to do it here. So we have to talk about it.”
“June,” I plead. The morning’s shame rises up in me like bile. I close my eyes.
I sense June approaching as the cushion next to me dips. When she reaches for my hand, I look down at it. Her palm is warm, smaller than mine, and covers my knuckles like a shell.
“I’ve seen them,” she says softly. My sister’s eyes shine with a tenderness I can’t bear. “The bags of stuff. In high school, I kept finding so many of them in your room at home. Food wrappers, boxes, all those wadded-up pieces of toilet paper. The Ziploc bags…”
“Stop.”
“I’ve seen it, Jayjay.”
“June, please.”
“I’ve seen the bags of vomit under your bed.”