“I wonder how it feels to cure someone,” Shelby muses as they have their fire-escape dinner. “Do you feel like a magician or like a god when you save someone? Or maybe you just feel like you’re a plumber fixing pipes.”
“You should go to school,” Ben suggests. “I see you as a healer.” He has a long, skinny body, even more evident now that he’s shirtless. Shelby thinks he’s lost weight since he started graduate school. Even though he’d been a screwup as a kid, he’s surprisingly serious about his studies now. He’s a nerd, falling in love with science just as he had with Shelby, suddenly and for reasons that are impossible to fathom. Plus he’s better-looking all the time, and Shelby doesn’t know how that’s even possible.
“I’d be a terrible student,” she remarks. She blew off NYU, and now she’d be two years behind. She’s pretty sure it’s too late for everything. “Plus I’m too poor.”
She’s earning minimum wage. She eats noodles and tofu and spicy eggplant for dinner only because Ben is foolish enough to take care of her. Caring about things doesn’t come easy to Shelby. She can hold her hand over the lit burner of a stove for the longest time and not feel a thing. Sometimes she sticks pins into her flesh just to make certain she’s alive.
“City College is nearly free. You can get a scholarship for the rest. And you won’t be poor when I get my degree. We’ll be borderline rich. That’s the whole point of becoming a pharmacist. People always need drugs.”
It seems Ben has plans for the future. Shelby assumes he’ll dump her by the time he succeeds at anything. She’s stoned most of the time, and she’s haunted, but she isn’t stupid. Ben latched on to her when he was a loser; once that changes, everything else will too.
“You’ve got a lot to give, Shelby. You can save the world.”
“Right.” Shelby feels a deep bitterness inside her. He doesn’t know her at all. She ruins whatever she touches.
On this evening the air smells like sulfur. Lacy pieces of black dirt float through the air as if the two of them are trapped inside an -upside-down snow globe. Ben can think whatever he wants. Shelby has absolutely nothing inside of her. She’s a black hole. A sinkhole. A whole lot of nothing. She’s told Ben that, but he doesn’t want to believe her. Who would have imagined he’d turn out to be such an optimist? Maybe that’s the reason Shelby has sex with him whenever he wants her. She has to give him something in return for his devotion. She makes certain to imagine she’s somewhere else when they’re in bed so she won’t be haunted by his desire and the sounds he makes, as if he’s drowning and expects her to save him.
Shelby hasn’t told Ben anything about her job. She doesn’t tell him much. She keeps things inside. She usually wears a hooded sweatshirt; that way everything in her mind is packed away where it belongs. At work, she prefers stacking dog food to manning the cash register. Fewer interactions with people equal fewer complications. She likes to feed the birds. Already, the parrots know her and do little dances when they spy her; the parakeets go wild when she approaches their cages. She loves birdsong; it clears her head. Or maybe it fills it. With all those chirps and trills ringing out, she doesn’t have to think about what she’s done and how she can never be forgiven.