“He’d be dead no matter what. It’s really not your fault.”
A woman on the edge of fifty, Plath had worked at Bright Ideas since its opening day, and at other indies and libraries for decades before that. She was a benevolent oddball with unnerving beauty: silver hair cropped close to the skull, wide green eyes, slender arms. She never wore makeup and sported her wrinkles proudly. And she often showed up at work with gifts for Lydia—startling things, like the creepy doll with no hair or the tin of Japanese candies that tasted like meat. Though she didn’t know for sure, Lydia assumed that Plath was single because she was too headstrong to get suckered by love, and most men, she imagined, would be made flaccid by her testimonials about Gilded Age vibrators, which she claimed were effective largely because of their threat of electrocution. Lydia sometimes saw Plath as the woman she might someday become: caring, creative, content—but inaccessible to nearly everyone alive.
“He would’ve found a way,” Plath said, “with or without you. Suicides are persistent like that.”
“It just doesn’t make sense.”
“You were good to Joey,” Plath said. “It makes me mad he did this to you.”
Lydia felt too empty to speak.
“And the bookstore, too. We were like his second home.”
Lydia pulled at a coil of her hair, silent.
“I mean, I loved the guy, I really did, but what the hell, Joey? Now I don’t have anyone to talk to about the Bermuda Triangle.”
“I’m sure you’ll find someone,” said Lydia.
“I just don’t get the drama,” Plath said, lighting a cigarette off of her cigarette. “Hanging himself in the History section? This from a guy who blushed when you said hi? Unless you were Lydia. The lovely Lydia.” Plath reached out and held Lydia’s shoulder. “I mean it,” she continued. “The kid adored you. You were really good to him.”
“He was a good guy.”
“I know,” Plath said. “But the next time he decides to kill himself, he should go backpacking in the winter in his undies. Swallow some cleaning products in a canoe. Just leave you out of it.”
Listening to Plath’s wandering thoughts, the obvious suddenly occurred to her: Joey had wanted her to find him. He’d wanted Lydia to be the one.
“And he didn’t even leave a note?” Plath said.
“No note.”
“I’m sorry,” Plath said, shaking her head, “but that’s like not tipping your waiter.”
No note, Lydia thought. Just a birthday photo of me.
“If I was going to kill myself,” Plath continued, “I’d leave a note just to get a few last digs in. Insult the guy who took me to prom. Give my parents one last guilt trip. Criticize my ex-husband’s penis. Make it count, you know? It’s not like you’d have anything to lose.” Plath stopped rambling and squeezed Lydia’s forearm. “Are you okay?”
“Mmm.”
But Lydia wasn’t okay. Something had been happening inside her. An old tight knot was beginning to unravel.
“You sure you’re okay?”
A hairy wrist tucked into a white latex glove. A white latex glove gripping a claw hammer. A claw hammer spun through with a girl’s hair. And blood. Always—
Lydia wiped her eyes on the threadbare sleeve of her sweater, breathed deep for a minute, and waited for the images to fade. She didn’t need a therapist to know that Joey’s hanging had opened doors long closed.
“So what did David say?” Plath asked.
“What does David always say?”
“The right thing,” Plath said. “Makes me sick how adorable he is. You should really go home and rest your soul. Spend the week reading with David at your side.”
“David’s usually more of a doer than a reader, if that makes sense.”
“Spend the week in bed with him then.”
“He reads,” Lydia said, smiling. “Just not like crazy. It’s mostly just the Sports section and crosswords and stuff for work. Last year for his birthday he asked for a programming book called C Plus Plus, whatever that means.”
“My god, Lydia, that’s the saddest thing you’ve ever said.”
“I feel better now.”
Plath bit her lips and looked to her hand for a cigarette that was no longer there.
“Listen,” she said. “I know this is freaky, and I really don’t want to add any more chaos to whatever you’re going through right now. But . . .”
“But?”
“It was in this morning’s paper. The event. The incident. No article or anything, just one of those captions beneath a photo of the scene.” Plath grimaced. “You were in it.”
“Me? In the photo?”
“In the photo. In the caption. It’s too bad you’re not the attention-getting sort. This would really make your day.”
Plath dived into the black bladder of her purse and retrieved a crumpled newspaper. Lydia glimpsed an image of Clinton giving a thumbs-up from a podium while Gingrich grumbled behind him. Plath flipped the page over. “See? That’s you by the door covering your mouth with your hands. Look at your wonderful hair. How do you get it to look so weed-whacked?”
“Oh god,” Lydia said, feeling the flush of self-consciousness that arrived at any mention of her appearance: the giant brown eyes that gave her a look of perpetual alarm; the slight curve in her shoulders that gave her a beaten hunch. Though she’d only recently turned thirty, Lydia couldn’t help but notice the gray sprigs that had infiltrated her hair and the new lines alongside her mouth that, when she relaxed, gave her the look of a frowning rabbit. She very nearly hyperventilated at the fact that this photo had accompanied a hundred thousand morning coffees. She wondered who had seen it—who had identified her.
“There’s the ambulance,” Plath said, pointing at the page, “and the gurney and poor Joey in his body bag. Why do they have to use black bags for bodies anyway? No wonder everyone’s afraid of death. Why not teal? Oh, and did you see what they called Joey in the caption? Unidentified man.”
Lydia sighed and glanced up the alley toward the sidewalk, where a couple of guys were locking a shopping cart to a lamppost.
“How sad to think of Joey like that,” Plath continued. “Unidentified man.”