They nod.
“Guys, it’s fine. I’m not going to flip out if you mention Mel. Someone dies, it pushes you to do shit you were putting off. Understood. So have at it. Need an agent? I’ll talk to mine. She’ll probably be glad to work with someone who’s actually doing something.”
“You’re not doing anything?” Tatum leans forward. He’s the listener, the one who watches for signs. I see him scan the living room, examine the ashtray. He’s the me of this partnership. But he’s asking more questions than I ever did. Smart. It’s because he’s a dude, I think bitterly. They program them to navigate.
“I’m kind of taking a break,” I say.
“Right on.” Ryan waggles his head. “Everybody needs a break sometimes.”
“So are you all working on something?”
“Yeah.” Ryan palms out his phone, starts tracing through. “We can show you some stuff. It’s about oversexed zombies who invent a secret aphrodisiac coffee. The coffee spreads worldwide and turns everything into a giant hump party. It’s gonna be the tits.”
“That’s a sweet message.”
“We think so. Mel helped us with it.”
“You guys need a place to stay?”
“Uh huh.”
Mom emerges with soda, plunks a Diet Coke in front of me. “Did I hear Sharon say y’all are staying with us?”
“Stay in the studio,” I tell them.
Mom looks up. “I thought you didn’t wanna go out there.”
“No one’s there. They might as well.” I turn to them. “This is the work studio we’re talking about, out in Bushwick. Stay there as long as you need. There’s a couple of beds, a couch. There’s stuff.”
“Holy shit,” Ryan says reverently. “That’d be awesome.” He glances at Tatum, then back at me. His face is so earnest, so hopeful. This is a person who hasn’t lost much yet. I get up and start putting on my shoes.
—
Front and center on the sidewalk outside the studio: a sizable human stool. “Dude,” Ryan says.
Mom turns to the boys. “I think y’all need to go back to Louisville right this minute.”
Two raccoons stare us down from the stoop. Mom starts at them, hissing. They skitter away. “Gotta show em who’s boss,” she tells us, and strides up the stairs, cupping her hands around her eyes to peer in.
“Your mom is awesome,” Tatum whispers.
I watch her sneeze. Take a layer of dirt off the window with her hand, wipe the grime off on the back of her Lees. “I guess,” I say.
I unlock the door, bang it open with my shoulder. Mom’s the first to step in. “Pee yoo,” she bellows, throwing her purse onto the floor. “We shoulda come up a long time ago, Sharon Kay. Smells like shit in here.” She disappears into the kitchen. Yells, “Sharon Kay. There are mice turds in here and I wanna know what you’re gonna do about it.”
“Your mom is awesome,” Ryan whispers.
“So you’ve said.”
“I’m gonna marry her.”
“Gross.”
“It’s not gross. It’s saxy.”
I sigh and put my bag down. The place makes me ashamed. I sort of care that Tatum and Ryan, two kids who looked up to us, are seeing my negligence for themselves. I care that Mom is seeing it. Balls, I’m starting to care that I’m seeing it. On the end table near the door, a Post-it note. One of Mel’s old shopping lists. A dragon with clouds drifting from its nostrils burps toilet paper popsicles Activia smokes.
I carefully put the list back where I found it. Without turning, I say, “She’s here because I freaked out on Xanax and ran into traffic one night.”
The rummaging in the kitchen stops, then quietly resumes. The boys have their hands sunk deep into their pockets. Tatum rubs his head, looks out the window.
I nod toward him. “There’s probably a mug shot online. Right?”
He shrugs. “The picture’s good. You look pretty.”
“That’s sweet. But the fact remains, I got arrested for being fucked up and sashaying out into the road. And I wasn’t fully clothed. Did I mention that?”
Ryan looks to Tatum and giggles. “That’s kinda righteous.”
“Yeah. Kinda.” There’s a heady, yeasty mold smell in the air. It’s cold. A few monstertruck roaches skitter under the couch. I pass the little mirror Mel and I used to check our line work from the opposite perspective. There are silver hairs now, sprouting around my temples, my crown. I stop, stare. “This part of Brooklyn is sort of in the wilderness,” I tell them, “or it used to be. Some coffee shops and stuff have popped up. You’re about forty-five minutes away from Manhattan on the L train. There aren’t many grocery stores around, so you might have to use delivery or take the subway to get what you need. But this place was good to us. It’ll be good to you, too.”
I swipe an old T-shirt draped over the back of the couch, wipe down the Cintiq. The crack in the corner is small, hardly visible. “You guys ever use one of these?”