“Well this is all very upsetting.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and then he doesn’t say anything else so I hang up. I won’t contact him again—there is no news he could give me that might make me glad I called. Jonah. Jesus. There was a time when I thought I might have been in love with him, though I was just unhappy and had wanted someone to do something about it and he’d been the likeliest candidate. I can see him in our kitchen with one of his girlfriends, an older divorced lady who didn’t want to hang out with us so we’d been seeing him less frequently. They’d come from the tennis court, were wearing their tennis whites. I try to picture him at the Mexican restaurant we frequented or sitting next to me in a lawn chair while my ex grilled hamburgers, but I can’t remember him with any specificity at any time or in any place other than this one. It makes me wonder how my closest friends will remember me when I’m gone—what completely insignificant moment will they recall?
He used to burn CDs for me, music he thought I’d like interspersed with the songs he’d written. I don’t know where they are; there were so many and I had thought so little of them.
When I hear Melinda run down the stairs, I put on a pair of shorts and rummage around in my purse for a cigarette. Then I go outside and sit on the stoop. Across the street there’s a crack house with a blue-tarp roof. I’m not sure how many people live there—a cast of characters come and go, cackling and drinking, tossing bottles into a trash can full of bottles: smash! But they’re quiet now.
I unlock my car, check the console and glove box. I find one of Jonah’s CDs in the passenger side door, still in its envelope with his small script: SONGS FOR L. I take it upstairs and download it to my computer, listen to “Rhinestone Lady,” “Porno King from New Orleans,” “Monkey Lover.” The lyrics I used to think were funny now seem seriously fucked up, but the melodies are nice. I might have loved Jonah. But if I loved him, why haven’t I thought of him? I imagine that I’m the one who might have saved him. For every man who commits suicide, there must be a dozen women who convince themselves that they were the only one with the power to save him and they failed.
In the kitchen, I take an energy bar out of the cabinet and chew it slowly, laboriously.
Melinda’s doors are open—they’re always wide open when she leaves. I walk into her bedroom and look at the comforter on the floor and the piles of books scattered about. A couple of wooden fish hang from the ceiling; brightly colored tapestries are tacked to the walls. There’s a medal from a marathon and half a dozen framed pictures on her dresser. I only have two pictures in the apartment: an elementary school photo of my sister, back when she was thin-limbed and straight-haired, and one with the L.A. boyfriend. They are pictures from past lives that have no bearing on this one at all. I might as well have my wedding album on display.
I never touch anything of Melinda’s. I just stand in her space feeling like an intruder.
When I get out of class, I drive to Ben’s. He lives on the second floor of a ten-unit, slum apartment building. From what I can tell, only men live here, though sometimes a woman visits and there’ll be a fight in the parking lot. If it disrupts whatever Ben’s doing, he’ll hang his head out the window and yell at the couple, or offer advice.
He opens the door and I hand him a twelve-pack. “I’m making you meatballs,” he says.
I follow him into the kitchen and sit on the counter, but the space is too small and I’m just getting in his way. He reaches behind me for the bread crumbs, shakes them into a bowl. He never measures anything.
“I called my ex-husband earlier and he told me that our best friend drank himself to death.” He stops what he’s doing. “I haven’t seen him since I left Meridian but we were really close.” I’m upset about it, but mostly I want someone to be upset for me. It’s tragic—a tragedy. Or perhaps I just want an excuse to get drunk.
He puts his forearm on my leg because his hands are coated in ground beef and egg, and looks at me too seriously.
“I’m fine—I just hate that he didn’t tell me. I have to call his mom. I used to work with her at Curves for Women.”
“You worked at Curves for Women?”
“It was basically a sales job and I was terrible at it. I didn’t know why anyone would want to join. And it was right next to Papa John’s so you had to smell pizza the whole time you’re working out.” I recall the unpleasantness of measuring the older women: my hands touching their inner thighs and breasts, their bodies warm and slightly damp.
I take a beer from the box and sit at his card table, which holds his laptop and a bunch of precariously stacked papers. When he turns on the fan and the window is open, they fly everywhere. I log onto Facebook and of course my cousin has written me, but as soon as I respond he’ll write me back and I’ll be in the same boat. It’s an ongoing nuisance, this pressure to engage in tedious conversations about dating and work when all I want to do is watch animal videos and stalk my exes. I consider the items in my Amazon cart, wonder if I still want them.
“I got you some of those chips you like,” he says, tossing me a bag of Gardetto’s.
“I love you.” I open it and pick out the crunchy brown pieces, eyeing his bottle of Klonopin. Sometimes he pours the pills into his hand and counts how many are left, and we discuss whether the doctor will believe he lost them or someone stole them and how clichéd that is.
A bottle cap hits the counter; he’s already on his second beer. Twelve is not going to be nearly enough.
“It smells so good,” I say. Whenever he makes meatballs, I eat them. I don’t think about cows or blood or Melinda. “I’m glad you’re cooking. I don’t have any food at home and I don’t go to the grocery store on Friday because it’s a madhouse.”
“It’s a madhouse!” he says, shaking his fist in the air. “A madhouse!”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve never seen Planet of the Apes?”
“No.”
He shakes his head. “I’m horrified to think how many Planet of the Apes references you’ve missed in your lifetime.”
After we’ve consumed huge plates of meatballs and spaghetti, along with all of the beer and a couple of Jack and Diet Cokes, we get into his bed.
“I’m full as a tick,” I say, running a hand over my body, trying to feel my hip bones and ribs; I should start weighing myself, keep a check on things. He rests a hand on my stomach and I wonder if he’s imagining a baby, if he wants to impregnate me so we’ll be stuck together forever, but then he gets up and stumbles into the bathroom. I run my fingers through my hair, untangling knots while he vomits.
“The last time I threw up it was pink from red wine,” I say, as he’s brushing his teeth. “It was kind of pretty.”