5150
by Nina Palattella
Editorial Mentorship Letter
Most of my family is Ohio to the core. It’s a small sample size, made smaller by burned bridges and lost contact. My dad was born in Akron and lives there still. His parents are somewhere in the state, last he knew—they don’t speak. I’ve never met them. My mother was born in Akron and lived there until she died. And I was born there and lived there, too, until two months ago, when I got out of the hospital and decided to move to New York.
I didn’t put all that much thought into it. I felt like I needed to go somewhere, and New York City was, as I understood it, the Place People Go. I could’ve just moved to Cleveland or something, but has anyone ever made a meaningful difference in his life by going only twenty minutes away? I found a house on Craigslist that needed a new tenant immediately. The apartment I currently lived in was a month-to-month arrangement, the bottom floor of a split-level owned by an elderly couple, the wife my upstairs neighbor and landlady, the husband in a nearby Alzheimer’s unit. I put in my two weeks at work. Told my dad.
He didn’t get it. All he knew about New York was that it was expensive and dangerous and the trains never ran on time. He’d never heard of the neighborhood I planned to live in, barely heard of the borough that housed it, despite the fact that Queens is the by far the largest of the five. I worked at a gas station at home and would likely do the same thing there; I have a high school diploma and little ambition. My dad’s worked at Goodyear since I was little, and my mom’s last job was cashier at a Marc’s. She fell down the stairs once when I was a kid, wrecked her back and never fully recovered. Drank too much and took too much Vicodin—then, too much heroin, because heroin was cheaper and the cartels drove it around like pizza deliverymen, brown chips in tiny balloons. To get Vicodin you had to leave your house and go to a doctor and lie. She died weeks before I finished eighth grade, of drug-related heart failure, at the age of thirty-four.
It's not like I grew up dreaming of New York, but I didn’t dream of the life I had back home, either.
Miraculously, the rent for the room I found was within a couple hundred dollars a month of what I was paying to live in a basement in Akron. I understood this was rare, lucky, maybe a little suspicious. I agreed to it, sent my information and a deposit, informed my new housemates of the date I planned to arrive. It was only after I had locked myself in that they explained their haste and the slashed rent—I was taking over the room of a person who had died. They did not tell me how. Maybe we were all dancing around the same conclusion.
When I moved in, I noticed a stain on the floor, a darker dirtiness embedded in the general must of the carpet. It didn’t look like blood, but I wondered. I put my dresser over it, and I try not to think about it too much.
I didn’t put all that much thought into it. I felt like I needed to go somewhere, and New York City was, as I understood it, the Place People Go. I could’ve just moved to Cleveland or something, but has anyone ever made a meaningful difference in his life by going only twenty minutes away? I found a house on Craigslist that needed a new tenant immediately. The apartment I currently lived in was a month-to-month arrangement, the bottom floor of a split-level owned by an elderly couple, the wife my upstairs neighbor and landlady, the husband in a nearby Alzheimer’s unit. I put in my two weeks at work. Told my dad.
He didn’t get it. All he knew about New York was that it was expensive and dangerous and the trains never ran on time. He’d never heard of the neighborhood I planned to live in, barely heard of the borough that housed it, despite the fact that Queens is the by far the largest of the five. I worked at a gas station at home and would likely do the same thing there; I have a high school diploma and little ambition. My dad’s worked at Goodyear since I was little, and my mom’s last job was cashier at a Marc’s. She fell down the stairs once when I was a kid, wrecked her back and never fully recovered. Drank too much and took too much Vicodin—then, too much heroin, because heroin was cheaper and the cartels drove it around like pizza deliverymen, brown chips in tiny balloons. To get Vicodin you had to leave your house and go to a doctor and lie. She died weeks before I finished eighth grade, of drug-related heart failure, at the age of thirty-four.
It's not like I grew up dreaming of New York, but I didn’t dream of the life I had back home, either.
Miraculously, the rent for the room I found was within a couple hundred dollars a month of what I was paying to live in a basement in Akron. I understood this was rare, lucky, maybe a little suspicious. I agreed to it, sent my information and a deposit, informed my new housemates of the date I planned to arrive. It was only after I had locked myself in that they explained their haste and the slashed rent—I was taking over the room of a person who had died. They did not tell me how. Maybe we were all dancing around the same conclusion.
When I moved in, I noticed a stain on the floor, a darker dirtiness embedded in the general must of the carpet. It didn’t look like blood, but I wondered. I put my dresser over it, and I try not to think about it too much.
* * *
True to form, I work at a convenience store at the corner of 82nd Street and Northern Boulevard, giving a broad view of the massive thoroughfare that runs all the way from Flushing down to Long Island. This store doesn’t sell gas, though there are gas stations dotting the other side of the highway, more of them than elsewhere in the city but still far fewer than in Ohio. If I stand on the sidewalk and look south, there’s a view of the Manhattan skyline. It looks best in the evening, the tops of the tall, angular buildings brushed pink by the sunset. The window behind the register is smudged, lending any light that filters through the panes a gritty quality that feels very much like New York. It’s the kind of thing I would post, that I would tell other people about, if it seemed like anyone might care.
I have two housemates, Luis and Steven. I rarely see them. I think they both work in construction, and they follow similar patterns, their footsteps shuffling to the bathroom at similar times, the same bars featured in their Snapchat stories. When I told them I’d always worked nights and planned to look for the same here, Steven said it made sense, that I looked nocturnal, like a rat, and Luis laughed, and I knew how things would go from there.
They call their former roommate Dee, and when they mention him—which isn’t often—it’s with the baffled, insulting affection that is the only kindness lots of men know how to show each other. That dumb bastard, they’ll say, smiling, shaking their heads, tipping their Coors Lights in the general direction of the afterlife.
“What’s your deal?” Steven asked me one day shortly after I moved in. He was coming back from the gym, and I was trying to make a grilled cheese in record time so I could get back upstairs. He didn’t say it unkindly—it was in the same tone he used to say that dumb bastard—but it didn’t seem like he was asking to get to know me. I slid my raw sandwich onto a plate and looked him in the eye as much as I could manage.
“I’m just weird, I guess,” I said, feeling my face get hot, willing him to ignore it like I was.
“Weird’s fine,” Steven said, as if he had any control over it, as if that made it okay. He took a large swig from a Blender Bottle full of water, the ball rattling aimlessly in the thin liquid. “Just don’t cause any trouble. We’ve had more than enough of that.”
I didn’t ask what he meant because I knew he wouldn’t answer me straight and I didn’t want to be shut out any more than I already felt.
Steven gestured with his head at my sandwich. “You should cook that longer next time,” he said. “It would taste better that way.”
I have two housemates, Luis and Steven. I rarely see them. I think they both work in construction, and they follow similar patterns, their footsteps shuffling to the bathroom at similar times, the same bars featured in their Snapchat stories. When I told them I’d always worked nights and planned to look for the same here, Steven said it made sense, that I looked nocturnal, like a rat, and Luis laughed, and I knew how things would go from there.
They call their former roommate Dee, and when they mention him—which isn’t often—it’s with the baffled, insulting affection that is the only kindness lots of men know how to show each other. That dumb bastard, they’ll say, smiling, shaking their heads, tipping their Coors Lights in the general direction of the afterlife.
“What’s your deal?” Steven asked me one day shortly after I moved in. He was coming back from the gym, and I was trying to make a grilled cheese in record time so I could get back upstairs. He didn’t say it unkindly—it was in the same tone he used to say that dumb bastard—but it didn’t seem like he was asking to get to know me. I slid my raw sandwich onto a plate and looked him in the eye as much as I could manage.
“I’m just weird, I guess,” I said, feeling my face get hot, willing him to ignore it like I was.
“Weird’s fine,” Steven said, as if he had any control over it, as if that made it okay. He took a large swig from a Blender Bottle full of water, the ball rattling aimlessly in the thin liquid. “Just don’t cause any trouble. We’ve had more than enough of that.”
I didn’t ask what he meant because I knew he wouldn’t answer me straight and I didn’t want to be shut out any more than I already felt.
Steven gestured with his head at my sandwich. “You should cook that longer next time,” he said. “It would taste better that way.”
* * *
I was in the hospital two months ago because I tried to kill myself. I didn’t really see it that way, not at first. I thought that, in order to qualify as an attempt, there would need to be more certainty behind it, more proof that I had a goal and that was it. I didn’t clean up, didn’t write a note. I wanted to die, though. That was true, and the more I thought about it in the hospital, the more sense it made that what I did combined with what I thought would be packaged together and labeled an attempt. I was sick any way they looked at it, and I needed help, so there wasn’t much reason to argue.
I was having a bad day, more so than most. I got home from a shift a bit after midnight and couldn’t sleep, even though I went through the motions that usually worked: a shower, a glass of vodka cut with a little ice water, Animal Planet playing at a low volume on the TV. I hadn’t really been sleeping, not well, or eating, not regularly, for weeks—at work I could act normal because there were witnesses, but there was no one else to keep me accountable when I was alone. Sometimes my dad would call, but our conversations were short, the usual questions and answers, and I could bluff my way through. I’d been putting off seeing him, which I hated, but I couldn’t bear to face the one person who might be able to tell that I was getting worse.
Night fell again, I repeated the routine, though it was no help. I still hadn’t slept, and I felt like it was all so much and so pointless, a nothingness enormous enough to become a crushing weight. I felt like I’d been treading water and then stopped, and without that motion I would sink, gravity would pull me down and I would let it. I got up from the futon with some difficulty and went to the kitchen to get the razorblade I kept in the silverware drawer, which I found underneath a takeout menu for a local pizza place.
This all sounds bad, I know. It wasn’t alarming at the time, which now makes it seem obvious how bad it really was. I wanted to feel better, wanted my chest to not feel so tight, and the vodka wasn’t working like it was supposed to. I just needed something to take the edge off a little more. I had pills in the bathroom, only Nyquil and ibuprofen and the like but chemicals nonetheless, and I took a couple handfuls and then finished my drink and cut myself before my vision started to blur. I was clumsy, cut my left arm deeper and longer than I meant to, and my heartbeat started to throb in the muscle immediately.
For a second I thought maybe it would all be fine, one way or another, but then I remembered my father. Could I really just not say anything? I slumped down in front of the futon and found his name in my phone, clicked call. If he didn’t pick up, then at least I would have tried. I expected the phone to ring longer, for him to sound dazed when he answered, if he answered, because it felt like the middle of the night. I expected him to be alone, but even in the instant before he spoke I could hear the life around him: the din of the television, of the chattering children. Working second shift and not sleeping had warped my sense of time; it was barely 8 PM.
“Hey, kid. What’s up?” He had sounded happy to hear from me, and I hadn’t been crying when I dialed but then I was. What had I thought I was going to say? The blood seeped into my pant legs, trickled onto the carpet. “Adam?”
“Help me,” I had said, the words choked and thick from the tears. I hadn’t wanted to say that, but all other thoughts had left me entirely. “Please help me.”
The domestic background noise was replaced with urgency, him giving a hurried explanation to his wife, bringing the phone back closer to his mouth when he told me to stay awake, stay with him, stay here. I got up to get a dish towel to wrap my worse arm and to unlock the door and then sat back down on the carpet.
My dad came in, breathing hard, searching wildly for an instant before he looked down and saw me on the floor. He looked like he wanted to hug me, and I wanted him to, but we had no time for that. I stood up and followed him to the car and he drove in a manner that was one degree shy of unconscionable recklessness. When he did stop for red lights, he’d put his hand on my shoulder, though I couldn’t look at him. I was grateful and confused and deeply ashamed and had no idea whether I was actually in danger of dying or not. The car pulled up to the curb of the emergency department at Akron General, and my dad put on the hazards, got out of the car, then got me out, and he left both car doors open as he walked me through the hospital’s entrance and repeated, trancelike, my son, my son until a nurse caught on and took me from him. All of this happened in about thirty seconds.
I woke up in a bed after an indeterminate length of time with staples in one arm and stitches in the other. My mouth tasted like burnt stomach acid, and my dad was sitting in a chair in the opposite corner, a bottle of Sprite Zero at his feet, leafing through an issue of Sports Illustrated with shaking hands. My face felt grainy, laden with little deposits of salt, and my hair was matted to the back of my neck with sweat.
“Dad?” I cleared my throat, which hurt like hell, then tried again. “Dad?”
The magazine swooshed to the floor as he got up, going as far as the foot of my bed. “What is it?”
Now that I had his attention, I’d lost my nerve. I wanted to tell him that this wasn’t about Travis, but if it wasn’t about him, then it was probably about my mom, which felt even worse. Maybe it wasn’t actually about just one thing, one reason, but about all the intervening years in which I hadn’t really gotten any better, only older. I could try not to bring my dad down with me, but even if we were distant, we were still intertwined, and when things got so bad that I needed to tell someone about them, he was the only person I would call.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “and thank you.”
“Of course,” Dad said. He smiled but it was a thin, sad smile. “I just want you to be okay.”
“I want to be okay, too,” I said, though if I’d been asked to produce tangible evidence of wanting or trying to be okay, I’m not sure I could. It seemed clear to me now that most of my energy had been devoted to not killing myself—beyond that, nothing about the quality of my life mattered to me.
“I’m here to help you. Get you well again.”
It’s worth noting here that a couple years after my mother died, my father met and then later married a decent woman who had two kids of her own, the ones who I heard in the background of what I thought would be the last phone call I would ever make. Kelly left her first husband, the kids’ father, when the littler one was barely a year old because she found out he was fucking the babysitter. I didn’t think men were dumb enough to actually do that anymore. Her vision for her second chance at a perfect life did not include meeting a man in his midthirties with a son already well into high school, but she loved my dad almost as much as he was relieved to have her, and so throughout the years she has mostly pretended (however politely) that I don’t really exist. She is an involved, dedicated parent, the kind who attends all the conferences and schedules all the activities and asks questions about thoughts and feelings, handing out emotional validation like candy. So when my dad says things like that to me now, I don’t hear him but instead I hear her, all the ways she has trained him to be better than he was with me.
The room got strangely quiet, strange because I always thought two people in this position would have more to say to each other. I wanted my mom, but I wasn’t going to say that. A few months ago I had turned twenty-three, and she’d been dead for nine years. It was not behind us, would never be resolved in the way that other things could be, but I didn’t have to bring it up, and so I wouldn’t.
“You could talk to someone. That could help you get better.”
I think about the pall of silence that cast over the house after Mom died, all the nights my father spent working and that I spent alone, the way we kept our feelings inside of ourselves like pins held in grenades. If I said I wouldn’t recognize that kid now, talking himself through math homework and microwaved dinners and the porch light left on, that would be a lie.
“Maybe it would.”
I was having a bad day, more so than most. I got home from a shift a bit after midnight and couldn’t sleep, even though I went through the motions that usually worked: a shower, a glass of vodka cut with a little ice water, Animal Planet playing at a low volume on the TV. I hadn’t really been sleeping, not well, or eating, not regularly, for weeks—at work I could act normal because there were witnesses, but there was no one else to keep me accountable when I was alone. Sometimes my dad would call, but our conversations were short, the usual questions and answers, and I could bluff my way through. I’d been putting off seeing him, which I hated, but I couldn’t bear to face the one person who might be able to tell that I was getting worse.
Night fell again, I repeated the routine, though it was no help. I still hadn’t slept, and I felt like it was all so much and so pointless, a nothingness enormous enough to become a crushing weight. I felt like I’d been treading water and then stopped, and without that motion I would sink, gravity would pull me down and I would let it. I got up from the futon with some difficulty and went to the kitchen to get the razorblade I kept in the silverware drawer, which I found underneath a takeout menu for a local pizza place.
This all sounds bad, I know. It wasn’t alarming at the time, which now makes it seem obvious how bad it really was. I wanted to feel better, wanted my chest to not feel so tight, and the vodka wasn’t working like it was supposed to. I just needed something to take the edge off a little more. I had pills in the bathroom, only Nyquil and ibuprofen and the like but chemicals nonetheless, and I took a couple handfuls and then finished my drink and cut myself before my vision started to blur. I was clumsy, cut my left arm deeper and longer than I meant to, and my heartbeat started to throb in the muscle immediately.
For a second I thought maybe it would all be fine, one way or another, but then I remembered my father. Could I really just not say anything? I slumped down in front of the futon and found his name in my phone, clicked call. If he didn’t pick up, then at least I would have tried. I expected the phone to ring longer, for him to sound dazed when he answered, if he answered, because it felt like the middle of the night. I expected him to be alone, but even in the instant before he spoke I could hear the life around him: the din of the television, of the chattering children. Working second shift and not sleeping had warped my sense of time; it was barely 8 PM.
“Hey, kid. What’s up?” He had sounded happy to hear from me, and I hadn’t been crying when I dialed but then I was. What had I thought I was going to say? The blood seeped into my pant legs, trickled onto the carpet. “Adam?”
“Help me,” I had said, the words choked and thick from the tears. I hadn’t wanted to say that, but all other thoughts had left me entirely. “Please help me.”
The domestic background noise was replaced with urgency, him giving a hurried explanation to his wife, bringing the phone back closer to his mouth when he told me to stay awake, stay with him, stay here. I got up to get a dish towel to wrap my worse arm and to unlock the door and then sat back down on the carpet.
My dad came in, breathing hard, searching wildly for an instant before he looked down and saw me on the floor. He looked like he wanted to hug me, and I wanted him to, but we had no time for that. I stood up and followed him to the car and he drove in a manner that was one degree shy of unconscionable recklessness. When he did stop for red lights, he’d put his hand on my shoulder, though I couldn’t look at him. I was grateful and confused and deeply ashamed and had no idea whether I was actually in danger of dying or not. The car pulled up to the curb of the emergency department at Akron General, and my dad put on the hazards, got out of the car, then got me out, and he left both car doors open as he walked me through the hospital’s entrance and repeated, trancelike, my son, my son until a nurse caught on and took me from him. All of this happened in about thirty seconds.
I woke up in a bed after an indeterminate length of time with staples in one arm and stitches in the other. My mouth tasted like burnt stomach acid, and my dad was sitting in a chair in the opposite corner, a bottle of Sprite Zero at his feet, leafing through an issue of Sports Illustrated with shaking hands. My face felt grainy, laden with little deposits of salt, and my hair was matted to the back of my neck with sweat.
“Dad?” I cleared my throat, which hurt like hell, then tried again. “Dad?”
The magazine swooshed to the floor as he got up, going as far as the foot of my bed. “What is it?”
Now that I had his attention, I’d lost my nerve. I wanted to tell him that this wasn’t about Travis, but if it wasn’t about him, then it was probably about my mom, which felt even worse. Maybe it wasn’t actually about just one thing, one reason, but about all the intervening years in which I hadn’t really gotten any better, only older. I could try not to bring my dad down with me, but even if we were distant, we were still intertwined, and when things got so bad that I needed to tell someone about them, he was the only person I would call.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “and thank you.”
“Of course,” Dad said. He smiled but it was a thin, sad smile. “I just want you to be okay.”
“I want to be okay, too,” I said, though if I’d been asked to produce tangible evidence of wanting or trying to be okay, I’m not sure I could. It seemed clear to me now that most of my energy had been devoted to not killing myself—beyond that, nothing about the quality of my life mattered to me.
“I’m here to help you. Get you well again.”
It’s worth noting here that a couple years after my mother died, my father met and then later married a decent woman who had two kids of her own, the ones who I heard in the background of what I thought would be the last phone call I would ever make. Kelly left her first husband, the kids’ father, when the littler one was barely a year old because she found out he was fucking the babysitter. I didn’t think men were dumb enough to actually do that anymore. Her vision for her second chance at a perfect life did not include meeting a man in his midthirties with a son already well into high school, but she loved my dad almost as much as he was relieved to have her, and so throughout the years she has mostly pretended (however politely) that I don’t really exist. She is an involved, dedicated parent, the kind who attends all the conferences and schedules all the activities and asks questions about thoughts and feelings, handing out emotional validation like candy. So when my dad says things like that to me now, I don’t hear him but instead I hear her, all the ways she has trained him to be better than he was with me.
The room got strangely quiet, strange because I always thought two people in this position would have more to say to each other. I wanted my mom, but I wasn’t going to say that. A few months ago I had turned twenty-three, and she’d been dead for nine years. It was not behind us, would never be resolved in the way that other things could be, but I didn’t have to bring it up, and so I wouldn’t.
“You could talk to someone. That could help you get better.”
I think about the pall of silence that cast over the house after Mom died, all the nights my father spent working and that I spent alone, the way we kept our feelings inside of ourselves like pins held in grenades. If I said I wouldn’t recognize that kid now, talking himself through math homework and microwaved dinners and the porch light left on, that would be a lie.
“Maybe it would.”
* * *
Since I moved to the city and specifically to my neighborhood, I’ve learned to speak a self-conscious, necessity-driven variation of Spanish, enough to complete basic transactions with the help of pointing and gesturing. The HELP WANTED sign at the Stop & Carry had noted that bilingual was preferred, and I said that I could learn—it would be a good use of all my extra time. I took a trip to the Strand, bought a few cheap workbooks meant for elementary school kids. From those and an app with a green cartoon bird that yells at me every time I screw up, I’ve managed to hammer into my head basic phrases and numbers zero to a thousand, primarily to avoid selling someone incorrect lottery tickets.
I’m ringing up an elderly lady for three Powerball plays, the numbers related to her grandchildren’s birthdays, when my phone buzzes, first only twice, then enough in rapid succession that it practically morphs into one continuous hum. I hand the customer her numerous receipts and then sneak my phone out of my pocket, determined to digest all the messages in fifteen seconds or less.
I can’t believe you moved and you didn’t tell me
How could you just not tell me?
I had to find out from fucking Barbara how lame is that?
I went to your place because you didn’t answer my texts and she said you were gone. You’ve been gone for almost TWO MONTHS
And to New York City no less do you even like it there??
I’m hurt like what the fuck Adam
You really should call me
I’ve just counted to fifteen when a squat man with violently callused knuckles places four forties of Budweiser on the counter in front of me, his eyes almost level with the slot in the plexiglass. I glance up at the clock—five-oh-two, though it’s never my place to judge. I scan them with one hand and use the other to slip my phone into the drawer under the register where it should’ve been my whole shift. Nobody does that because nobody actually cares, except me, in this moment, because I’m happy to have the excuse.
I’m ringing up an elderly lady for three Powerball plays, the numbers related to her grandchildren’s birthdays, when my phone buzzes, first only twice, then enough in rapid succession that it practically morphs into one continuous hum. I hand the customer her numerous receipts and then sneak my phone out of my pocket, determined to digest all the messages in fifteen seconds or less.
I can’t believe you moved and you didn’t tell me
How could you just not tell me?
I had to find out from fucking Barbara how lame is that?
I went to your place because you didn’t answer my texts and she said you were gone. You’ve been gone for almost TWO MONTHS
And to New York City no less do you even like it there??
I’m hurt like what the fuck Adam
You really should call me
I’ve just counted to fifteen when a squat man with violently callused knuckles places four forties of Budweiser on the counter in front of me, his eyes almost level with the slot in the plexiglass. I glance up at the clock—five-oh-two, though it’s never my place to judge. I scan them with one hand and use the other to slip my phone into the drawer under the register where it should’ve been my whole shift. Nobody does that because nobody actually cares, except me, in this moment, because I’m happy to have the excuse.
* * *
Travis already worked at the gas station when I started there. We dated for eight months. For six of those months, he lived with me in the basement, because before that he had been living with his sister, or out of his car, or with a friend, or he’d spend the night when he hooked up with someone and then squeeze an extra night or two out of it somehow. He told me this early on, laying back on my bed, relaxed, triumphant almost, like the whole episode was not comparable to homelessness but instead a fun adventure that he went on because he always knew he’d survive it.
Travis lived on a different, more prosperous edge of the city than I did, went to different, better schools. Both of his parents are in mid-level management at a dull-sounding company, and they’re both miserable, so he said. He wasn’t in contact with them anymore, for reasons he was adamant but vague about. “We have multiple differences of opinion,” he told me, “and some things you can’t forgive.” But they’re still together, and they’re still alive— that was my interpretation, but I didn’t share that with him. I knew him, not his parents, so why would I take their side?
I liked him when I first saw him. He was that kind of guy, impossible not to like. He had the whole staff under his thumb, constantly charming everyone with easy humor and inside jokes. He was the designated trainer for new employees; at two years on the job, he was what passed for a veteran. He taught me how to clean the soda fountain so the drinks didn’t taste like soap, where to slap my palm against the register to open the cash drawer when it stuck.
We traded cigarettes outside on breaks, then small stories, then phone numbers. He did almost all of the talking—then, when we were dating, and even now, when he sends me texts that I try my best not to answer. He’s always had more to tell, more of a willingness to talk, even about the bad things. At first, many of his texts were seemingly irrelevant except that they meant we were talking outside of work: video clips of a car revving its engine so hard it shot flames, a dog jumping on a trampoline, a person fumbling a skate trick so terribly it was almost funny. Occasionally he’d ask about me, about my day, and I’d tell him what little there was to tell.
But then after a couple of weeks he started referring to me as his boyfriend. I overheard him tell a customer, Go see my boyfriend—he’s over there, he’ll help you.
He wove his way into my life so subtly that I barely noticed it was happening. I should’ve known from how we began what he was capable of, but because it was flattery, I didn’t suspect anything, like how a knife can resemble just another shiny thing if you’re not looking at it quite right. He stayed over so often that he stopped asking if he could, said us and our about things that I’d only thought of as mine. Used the washer and dryer and shampoo and nail clippers and stopped saying thank you because it all felt like a given.
One day, I went into work when he had the day off. When I came back ten hours later, he was right in bed (my bed, our bed, depending on who you asked) where I had left him.
“Did you leave at all today?” I asked.
“No?” I wondered if I’d given him the wrong impression and he thought that no was the right answer, if I had somehow instilled in him the idea that he was supposed to stay here whenever possible. “In case you forgot, Adam, I don’t really have anywhere else to go.”
“Right. Sorry.” After that, I didn’t ask him if he had left, where he’d been when he came back. He had friends, but I never met them, and I never asked why he didn’t stay there instead. If he’d wanted me to know, he would’ve told me. He could explain anything, make up for anything. He could be caring, considerate, sexy, adorable, but I also learned not to question anything he said. I kept my doubts, my criticisms, to myself. I defended him whenever my dad asked if it was possible that he was using me. It was nice to have company, to have someone who wanted mine.
And he could be excellent company. It was easier to remember to eat when I had someone else to eat with, more fun to go places when I could hold his hand the whole way there and back. He called me sweet and funny and charming, positive qualities that no one had bothered to notice or name for years. He said I love you so frequently that you’d think it was all he was put on this earth to do. He told me it was okay to be myself around him, and so I let him in until he left by telling me that he no longer thought that I was good for him. He did not elaborate and he did not need to, because he knew that I did not believe I was truly good for anyone. I had told him this myself one night, when we were laying in my bed in the dark and he said that he loved me, and then he said, Tell me something you’ve always been afraid to tell anyone. I want to feel like I’m special to you. I just want to get to know you, that’s all.
Travis lived on a different, more prosperous edge of the city than I did, went to different, better schools. Both of his parents are in mid-level management at a dull-sounding company, and they’re both miserable, so he said. He wasn’t in contact with them anymore, for reasons he was adamant but vague about. “We have multiple differences of opinion,” he told me, “and some things you can’t forgive.” But they’re still together, and they’re still alive— that was my interpretation, but I didn’t share that with him. I knew him, not his parents, so why would I take their side?
I liked him when I first saw him. He was that kind of guy, impossible not to like. He had the whole staff under his thumb, constantly charming everyone with easy humor and inside jokes. He was the designated trainer for new employees; at two years on the job, he was what passed for a veteran. He taught me how to clean the soda fountain so the drinks didn’t taste like soap, where to slap my palm against the register to open the cash drawer when it stuck.
We traded cigarettes outside on breaks, then small stories, then phone numbers. He did almost all of the talking—then, when we were dating, and even now, when he sends me texts that I try my best not to answer. He’s always had more to tell, more of a willingness to talk, even about the bad things. At first, many of his texts were seemingly irrelevant except that they meant we were talking outside of work: video clips of a car revving its engine so hard it shot flames, a dog jumping on a trampoline, a person fumbling a skate trick so terribly it was almost funny. Occasionally he’d ask about me, about my day, and I’d tell him what little there was to tell.
But then after a couple of weeks he started referring to me as his boyfriend. I overheard him tell a customer, Go see my boyfriend—he’s over there, he’ll help you.
He wove his way into my life so subtly that I barely noticed it was happening. I should’ve known from how we began what he was capable of, but because it was flattery, I didn’t suspect anything, like how a knife can resemble just another shiny thing if you’re not looking at it quite right. He stayed over so often that he stopped asking if he could, said us and our about things that I’d only thought of as mine. Used the washer and dryer and shampoo and nail clippers and stopped saying thank you because it all felt like a given.
One day, I went into work when he had the day off. When I came back ten hours later, he was right in bed (my bed, our bed, depending on who you asked) where I had left him.
“Did you leave at all today?” I asked.
“No?” I wondered if I’d given him the wrong impression and he thought that no was the right answer, if I had somehow instilled in him the idea that he was supposed to stay here whenever possible. “In case you forgot, Adam, I don’t really have anywhere else to go.”
“Right. Sorry.” After that, I didn’t ask him if he had left, where he’d been when he came back. He had friends, but I never met them, and I never asked why he didn’t stay there instead. If he’d wanted me to know, he would’ve told me. He could explain anything, make up for anything. He could be caring, considerate, sexy, adorable, but I also learned not to question anything he said. I kept my doubts, my criticisms, to myself. I defended him whenever my dad asked if it was possible that he was using me. It was nice to have company, to have someone who wanted mine.
And he could be excellent company. It was easier to remember to eat when I had someone else to eat with, more fun to go places when I could hold his hand the whole way there and back. He called me sweet and funny and charming, positive qualities that no one had bothered to notice or name for years. He said I love you so frequently that you’d think it was all he was put on this earth to do. He told me it was okay to be myself around him, and so I let him in until he left by telling me that he no longer thought that I was good for him. He did not elaborate and he did not need to, because he knew that I did not believe I was truly good for anyone. I had told him this myself one night, when we were laying in my bed in the dark and he said that he loved me, and then he said, Tell me something you’ve always been afraid to tell anyone. I want to feel like I’m special to you. I just want to get to know you, that’s all.
* * *
After the attempt, I was put on a 5150 for seventy-two hours, which is typical. I don’t know the reasoning behind the length of time—it could be medical, biblical, or both. After intake, I slept for a while, then when I woke up it was breakfast, which I ate because nobody told me there would be consequences if I didn’t but I could feel the presence of consequences all around me. I lined up at the nurses’ station with everyone else and got my Zoloft, plus another pill or two that they thought might help. Some of the people there were chatting with each other, at ease, though certainly some others looked like they’d rather be home.
The first time they asked me if I was still thinking about hurting myself, I said, Kind of? I was still very much in the beginning of the three days, and I had yet to learn the correct answers. When I wasn’t sleeping or in therapy or taking meals in the cafeteria, I sat in front of the TV in the common area, but I don’t remember anything that was on. The patients who spent too much time in their rooms during the daytime hours got talked to, so I stayed where I could be seen, even if I didn’t feel any less alone out there.
On the second day, when they asked me if I still thought about hurting myself, I’d wised up and so I said, No, I don’t, not now. I wanted the chance to go home and learn how to be normal, I added, in so many words. They didn’t shorten my stay after they’d gotten this out of me, but still I knew it was the right answer. It wasn’t like I’d bought a gun or jumped into the Cuyahoga with rocks in my pockets. It was just pills, so it wasn’t really that serious, right? I fell back on this thinking when it was convenient, like a gymnast tumbling onto a mat. But still I was sitting in a hospital where I wasn’t allowed to wear real shoes.
And the cutting, the doctor said, that had to stop, too. I knew it wasn’t good for me, but I also considered it separate from real life, a measure to be deployed only in the most desperate circumstances, the emotional equivalent of pulling the emergency brake on a car. No rationalizing, it was unhealthy, I had to stop. You really ought to be seeing a therapist. I didn’t disagree, but even then, thinking of the effort it would take, I knew I wouldn’t do it, still not yet.
I said that I’d consider it, but it would have to wait, because I was planning on moving soon. The excuse came so easily that this might as well have been my plan the whole time, and now I believed in it. It was as good as the truth, really. I would move to New York City, because why wouldn’t I? Where else would there be to go?
The first time they asked me if I was still thinking about hurting myself, I said, Kind of? I was still very much in the beginning of the three days, and I had yet to learn the correct answers. When I wasn’t sleeping or in therapy or taking meals in the cafeteria, I sat in front of the TV in the common area, but I don’t remember anything that was on. The patients who spent too much time in their rooms during the daytime hours got talked to, so I stayed where I could be seen, even if I didn’t feel any less alone out there.
On the second day, when they asked me if I still thought about hurting myself, I’d wised up and so I said, No, I don’t, not now. I wanted the chance to go home and learn how to be normal, I added, in so many words. They didn’t shorten my stay after they’d gotten this out of me, but still I knew it was the right answer. It wasn’t like I’d bought a gun or jumped into the Cuyahoga with rocks in my pockets. It was just pills, so it wasn’t really that serious, right? I fell back on this thinking when it was convenient, like a gymnast tumbling onto a mat. But still I was sitting in a hospital where I wasn’t allowed to wear real shoes.
And the cutting, the doctor said, that had to stop, too. I knew it wasn’t good for me, but I also considered it separate from real life, a measure to be deployed only in the most desperate circumstances, the emotional equivalent of pulling the emergency brake on a car. No rationalizing, it was unhealthy, I had to stop. You really ought to be seeing a therapist. I didn’t disagree, but even then, thinking of the effort it would take, I knew I wouldn’t do it, still not yet.
I said that I’d consider it, but it would have to wait, because I was planning on moving soon. The excuse came so easily that this might as well have been my plan the whole time, and now I believed in it. It was as good as the truth, really. I would move to New York City, because why wouldn’t I? Where else would there be to go?
* * *
On my day off, I wake up early-ish (before noon) and take the 7 train to Times Square . I have no clear objective once I get there, planning mainly just to amble around and watch the advertisements flash on the larger-than-life screens. Around me, families of tall, slender German tourists march from store to store, clutching Nike shopping bags the size of small duffels. The pavement resembles a dirty grill pan in both heat and texture. I get why “real” New Yorkers supposedly hate the place, this crater of commerce that smells like piss and poorly fried chicken, where everything is for sale. I love it a little bit.
Also, when I come here, I can’t help but think of my mom. She never made it to New York City, but she would have loved Times Square and all its excesses with her entire heart. She would have taken in the sales at the giant Macy’s, the Tibetan monks hawking their bracelets, the Top View employees with their laminated maps, the carriage bikers banging “Empire State of Mind” on repeat—she wouldn’t have scoffed at any of it. She wouldn’t have known that she was supposed to, if she’d been more worldly, more discerning, two things she was not. I get a chicken over rice from a halal cart and sit on one of the large rectangular stones in the plaza, watching the screens switch ads from Cartier to Coca-Cola to Spotify’s album of the week, plus so many more I can’t keep track of them all. In the bike lane to my right, two guys in designer street clothes try to hustle a woman into buying their CDs.
My phone buzzes louder than necessary next to me on the rock. I read the text from my dad first, at the top of a small stack of push notifications:
Hey kiddo. How’s things? Wanted to check in and also ask if you’d found a therapist out there like the doctor said? I know you took some extras of your meds when you left but you don’t want to run out. And it might be good to have someone to talk to. Miss you.
Then I see, from a couple of hours ago, a text from Travis:
Just so you know you can move but that’s not going to change anything. I know ur still miserable and alone out there because that’s just who you are. If you really thought it’d be any different then ur a joke. Psycho
I turn my phone off and put it down. Suddenly I feel like I’m going to cry—and I could, I know I could. The day after I moved, I saw a screenshot of a tweet, undoubtedly pushed up my feed by some shadowy location-based algorithm, that said: NEW YORK IS A GREAT PLACE TO HAVE A HORRIBLE DAY BECAUSE YOU CAN CRY IN PUBLIC AND LITERALLY NO ONE CARES. I laughed at it even then, before I knew from any real experience that it’s funny because it's true. I finish my food even though I don’t really taste it anymore, then go to the garbage can, dodge the CD guys (and the Top View guys and the bracelet monks), and begin a long, aimless trek uptown on Broadway. The plan is to walk until I tire myself out enough that when I go home, I can get a few hours of sleep.
Also, when I come here, I can’t help but think of my mom. She never made it to New York City, but she would have loved Times Square and all its excesses with her entire heart. She would have taken in the sales at the giant Macy’s, the Tibetan monks hawking their bracelets, the Top View employees with their laminated maps, the carriage bikers banging “Empire State of Mind” on repeat—she wouldn’t have scoffed at any of it. She wouldn’t have known that she was supposed to, if she’d been more worldly, more discerning, two things she was not. I get a chicken over rice from a halal cart and sit on one of the large rectangular stones in the plaza, watching the screens switch ads from Cartier to Coca-Cola to Spotify’s album of the week, plus so many more I can’t keep track of them all. In the bike lane to my right, two guys in designer street clothes try to hustle a woman into buying their CDs.
My phone buzzes louder than necessary next to me on the rock. I read the text from my dad first, at the top of a small stack of push notifications:
Hey kiddo. How’s things? Wanted to check in and also ask if you’d found a therapist out there like the doctor said? I know you took some extras of your meds when you left but you don’t want to run out. And it might be good to have someone to talk to. Miss you.
Then I see, from a couple of hours ago, a text from Travis:
Just so you know you can move but that’s not going to change anything. I know ur still miserable and alone out there because that’s just who you are. If you really thought it’d be any different then ur a joke. Psycho
I turn my phone off and put it down. Suddenly I feel like I’m going to cry—and I could, I know I could. The day after I moved, I saw a screenshot of a tweet, undoubtedly pushed up my feed by some shadowy location-based algorithm, that said: NEW YORK IS A GREAT PLACE TO HAVE A HORRIBLE DAY BECAUSE YOU CAN CRY IN PUBLIC AND LITERALLY NO ONE CARES. I laughed at it even then, before I knew from any real experience that it’s funny because it's true. I finish my food even though I don’t really taste it anymore, then go to the garbage can, dodge the CD guys (and the Top View guys and the bracelet monks), and begin a long, aimless trek uptown on Broadway. The plan is to walk until I tire myself out enough that when I go home, I can get a few hours of sleep.
* * *
On the nights I get home from work and it’s too late to do anything useful with myself and yet I’m too wired to rest, I look up Travis’ Instagram. It is not good for me and I can’t help it, like picking a scab and never letting it heal so I’ll always have something to do. His most recent posts show him at his older sister’s place, killing time on the University of Akron campus with friends though none of them go there, doing a thin neat line of cocaine off a glass coffee table at a party. I never appeared in any of these photos, so there was nothing to delete when he decided he was done with me. He no longer works at the gas station, though I don’t know why.
I’m looking absently into the tranquilizing glare of my phone screen when I realize I never responded to my dad’s text. I didn’t respond to Travis, either, but it’s better than to let him think that he’s right through my silence than sacrifice myself to an argument I’ve already lost. Nothing would say psycho like sending him a three-paragraph text on why he’s the psycho, thank you very much.
My throat tightens when I read the word kiddo but not as much as it did the first time. Things are good, I write, working a lot, trying to stay cool now that it’s July. No therapist yet, I need to check the insurance, I will, I know it’s important. But I feel okay, I add. I attach a slightly blurred photo of Times Square to the message and send it. I don’t mention that it reminded me of Mom, sparing us from the possibility of having to talk about it.
I turn over onto my side, try to feign sleep well enough to trick my body into slipping into unconsciousness for real. Downstairs, Luis is watching one of his telenovelas at a loud volume, barking laughs in the spaces between the dialogue. My phone buzzes. My dad, surprisingly; at this hour, my first guess is always Travis, fucked up and angry, searching for the easiest target. The kids must be long asleep by now, and I figured he would be, too.
That’s great that you feel okay. Thanks for the photo. And please keep looking. You can always call if you need help
I react to the message with a heart and then place my phone out of reach. I know he means that in theory. His options are more limited now and I think that makes him nervous—he’s still only a call away, but then what? He doesn’t know (and neither do I) but he does not want that to stop me.
He may not know this, but this is the truth: If he did not pick up the phone that night, I would not have tried to call anyone else. Not 911, not a crisis line, not Kelly, not even Travis. I go back and forth about whether I would have left a message. I would have laid down on the futon and closed my eyes, and if the next day came and I woke up caked in my own blood but somehow still alive, I would have showered and brushed my teeth and gone into work, having squandered, in my mind, both my one chance to kill myself and my one chance to get help. I wouldn’t have known how to do anything else. I still don’t.
I’m looking absently into the tranquilizing glare of my phone screen when I realize I never responded to my dad’s text. I didn’t respond to Travis, either, but it’s better than to let him think that he’s right through my silence than sacrifice myself to an argument I’ve already lost. Nothing would say psycho like sending him a three-paragraph text on why he’s the psycho, thank you very much.
My throat tightens when I read the word kiddo but not as much as it did the first time. Things are good, I write, working a lot, trying to stay cool now that it’s July. No therapist yet, I need to check the insurance, I will, I know it’s important. But I feel okay, I add. I attach a slightly blurred photo of Times Square to the message and send it. I don’t mention that it reminded me of Mom, sparing us from the possibility of having to talk about it.
I turn over onto my side, try to feign sleep well enough to trick my body into slipping into unconsciousness for real. Downstairs, Luis is watching one of his telenovelas at a loud volume, barking laughs in the spaces between the dialogue. My phone buzzes. My dad, surprisingly; at this hour, my first guess is always Travis, fucked up and angry, searching for the easiest target. The kids must be long asleep by now, and I figured he would be, too.
That’s great that you feel okay. Thanks for the photo. And please keep looking. You can always call if you need help
I react to the message with a heart and then place my phone out of reach. I know he means that in theory. His options are more limited now and I think that makes him nervous—he’s still only a call away, but then what? He doesn’t know (and neither do I) but he does not want that to stop me.
He may not know this, but this is the truth: If he did not pick up the phone that night, I would not have tried to call anyone else. Not 911, not a crisis line, not Kelly, not even Travis. I go back and forth about whether I would have left a message. I would have laid down on the futon and closed my eyes, and if the next day came and I woke up caked in my own blood but somehow still alive, I would have showered and brushed my teeth and gone into work, having squandered, in my mind, both my one chance to kill myself and my one chance to get help. I wouldn’t have known how to do anything else. I still don’t.
* * *
When she comes into the store, it’s just after 11 PM on Friday night, not late enough for me to begin the major closing steps but late enough that I’ve started to anticipate them. Half of her hair, blonde with streaks of purple on the underside, has fallen out of her ponytail, and her mascara is smudged. I notice the way she’s walking—hesitantly, like the floor underneath her wedges might not actually be there the next time she sets her foot down. She goes to the canned and bagged food aisle (really, the only food aisle), plucks off Funyuns, hot chips, Cosmic Brownies. I would offer her a basket, but we don’t have any out. I put them all away already. I’m not watching her on purpose, but it’s just the two of us, and it’s a small store.
She looks up and seems surprised to see me, a cashier who is young and white like her in a neighborhood that is largely not. She goes to the third cooler and takes out a can of classic Mike’s Harder Lemonade, looks at it, then takes out a black cherry one as well, filling her arms to capacity. I try to remember the rule about selling alcohol to people who appear intoxicated, debate my confidence in enforcing it. She lopes to the counter and sets down her goodies, making sure the cans land right side up. The light above the register accentuates the grayish tear tracks under her eyes.
“You live around here?” she asks. The slur in her words is muted enough that I can almost pretend I don’t hear it. I scan the first can, type in 01/01/2000 as the birthday without asking. She hasn’t taken out her wallet.
“I do,” I say.
“That’s really cool.” She rests her bare forearm on the glass and sets her chin on top of it. “It must be really cool to live in a neighborhood with so much culture.”
“You don’t live around here?”
“No, I live in Bushwick. Are you surprised?” Her question gives away the answer, and I smile like I get the joke.
“What brought you up here?”
She exhales into her skin. I scan another item, wondering if I should ask her if she knows she’ll have to pay eventually. “Well, I got fired—”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s not, but—my friend offered to throw me a pity party after I got done, since today was my last day. She didn’t call it that, but that’s what it was. She probably didn’t trust me to be alone. Anyway, she and her boyfriend live around here, and the boyfriend was there, too, plus a bunch of her other friends I didn’t know she would invite. I thought it would just be me and her hanging out, but I think she thought they could be my friends, too. I’m just not that kind of person, like, the kind who can absorb other people’s friends easily. And there was food, like a vegan’s idea of charcuterie-board-type shit, and—well, they called them cocktails, but they had these designer seltzers that were, like, two-point-five ABV max. And I’m trying to get out of my head, which takes a lot more than three percent alcohol. I did two shots of a vodka I found in their kitchen before I left, and now I’m here. That’s my very long and sad answer to why I’m in your neighborhood.”
She smiles. Unlike any other customer, she doesn’t seem to care that I’m haphazardly ringing up an item a minute. She seems happy for any excuse to linger. She sticks out a hand in my direction.
“I’m Cassidy,” she says.
I look at her hand, momentarily unsure of the appropriate response to anything. I reach out in return, crinkling the bag of Funyuns with my movement, completing the handshake.
“I’m Adam.” She takes her hand away first, and I ring up the last of her snacks. “I’m sorry you got fired,” I add, because it seems worth repeating.
“It was my fault,” she says, an admission that surprises me. “I mean, I appreciate that, but yeah, I fucked up. I fucked up an assignment, and then I lied about fucking up the assignment, and then my editor found out—but like, of course she did, she’s been doing this shit longer than I’ve been alive.”
“An assignment?” I picture a test, a book report, though she must mean something else. “What did you do for work?”
“Oh, sorry, I was in magazines, like, book…journalism? It’s hard to explain. My degree is in English. What about you?”
“I didn’t go to college.”
“Oh, yeah, of course not,” she says, which makes me feel neither better nor worse. “So you’ve always worked in places like this?”
“Yeah, pretty much. I haven’t been at this place that long, though.”
“How long have you lived in the city?”
“Six weeks.” I’m embarrassed to say this out loud, but Cassidy looks delighted. She leans further over the counter, pulling the neckline of her T-shirt down another inch.
“Six weeks? Holy shit. I thought I was a newbie, and I’ve been here almost two years. Where did you move from?”
“Akron. It’s in Ohio.”
“A Midwesterner! That’s so funny, I’m from Pennsylvania. And not like Philly, more like Mechanicsburg. I know it doesn’t really mean anything, but still, I like meeting people who moved here from farther away, too.”
“Yeah,” I say. I don’t know where Luis or Steven is from, anything concrete about their personal lives, their pasts. “Do you miss your family?”
“I do, sometimes. I haven’t told them anything about what happened at work. I’m scared as fuck to have to tell them, and ashamed, and a whole bunch of other things. I’m worried that they’ll demand I come home. I’ll probably have to, if I’m being honest, if I can’t find another job, since there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to make rent. So I miss them, but soon I might wish I’d never been born. Do you? Miss your family? Have you had the chance to miss them yet?”
“Kind of. I mean yes. It’s just my dad, really.”
“Your mom left you?”
“No, she died.”
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” Cassidy lifts her head off her arm, looks into the security camera above the register, and waves. It’s pointed down to where I sit, not out at the store, which tells you something. I don’t think it’s on, but I don’t take my chances. When she turns her head, I think I see a smudge behind her left ear, but then I see that it’s actually a tiny tattoo of an opened book.
“It’s okay.” It’s not, but. “She died a long time ago.”
“But you probably still miss her.”
“I do.”
“I bet.”
Cassidy looks expectant, still in search of a story despite what she did to her last one. I rip one of the black plastic bags off the rack on the wall behind me and start putting her things in there, cans first in their narrow paper silos. “Your total is $15.87.”
“Christ, I forgot I was going to have to pay you! I’m such a fucking mess, forgive me.” She laughs as she pulls a twenty from her wallet, doesn’t even try to make the change. Most people don’t. I give her what she’s owed and she drops it loose into her purse, waves away the receipt.
“I’m glad we met, Adam,” she says. “You’re friendly. I feel like I needed this.”
“Thanks,” I say. It’s not in my vocabulary to return the sentiment, to say that things happen for reasons, that people come into your life when you need them, because you need them, then leave in a similar way. “I hope you find a new job soon.”
She barks a laugh that echoes off all the metal in the store. “Yeah! Thanks, me too. You know what they say—if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. And if you can’t make it, you can always kill yourself. That’s what I would add.”
The skin on the back of my neck prickles.
“I guess you’re right,” I say.
“Sorry, was that fucked up? I’m not going to make a pit stop at the Hudson, don’t worry. Or jump in front of a train—god, can you imagine? Not tonight. I’ve got booze to drink.” She walks toward the door, more buoyant than she was however many minutes ago when she walked in. “Good night, Adam.”
“Good night, Cassidy.”
She seems thrilled that I remembered her name, and she smiles wide as she walks out, heading south on Northern Boulevard. I check the clock and find that not that much time has passed. I take a rag from under the counter and start wiping it down. I know I’ll never see her again, even if I lived a whole lifetime in the city, and so did she—it’s all just coincidence.
Like what she said, that was just a coincidence, too. I agree with what she said about the train, but the river, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t want to die in a way that makes hundreds of strangers hate me for screwing up their commute, but the river would be quiet, easy. Easier. There are no truly easy ways, but some are better than others. I’m glad I kept this all to myself, though, even if it would’ve been a way to make conversation. I don’t think she was serious. I think I would’ve been able to tell.
She looks up and seems surprised to see me, a cashier who is young and white like her in a neighborhood that is largely not. She goes to the third cooler and takes out a can of classic Mike’s Harder Lemonade, looks at it, then takes out a black cherry one as well, filling her arms to capacity. I try to remember the rule about selling alcohol to people who appear intoxicated, debate my confidence in enforcing it. She lopes to the counter and sets down her goodies, making sure the cans land right side up. The light above the register accentuates the grayish tear tracks under her eyes.
“You live around here?” she asks. The slur in her words is muted enough that I can almost pretend I don’t hear it. I scan the first can, type in 01/01/2000 as the birthday without asking. She hasn’t taken out her wallet.
“I do,” I say.
“That’s really cool.” She rests her bare forearm on the glass and sets her chin on top of it. “It must be really cool to live in a neighborhood with so much culture.”
“You don’t live around here?”
“No, I live in Bushwick. Are you surprised?” Her question gives away the answer, and I smile like I get the joke.
“What brought you up here?”
She exhales into her skin. I scan another item, wondering if I should ask her if she knows she’ll have to pay eventually. “Well, I got fired—”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s not, but—my friend offered to throw me a pity party after I got done, since today was my last day. She didn’t call it that, but that’s what it was. She probably didn’t trust me to be alone. Anyway, she and her boyfriend live around here, and the boyfriend was there, too, plus a bunch of her other friends I didn’t know she would invite. I thought it would just be me and her hanging out, but I think she thought they could be my friends, too. I’m just not that kind of person, like, the kind who can absorb other people’s friends easily. And there was food, like a vegan’s idea of charcuterie-board-type shit, and—well, they called them cocktails, but they had these designer seltzers that were, like, two-point-five ABV max. And I’m trying to get out of my head, which takes a lot more than three percent alcohol. I did two shots of a vodka I found in their kitchen before I left, and now I’m here. That’s my very long and sad answer to why I’m in your neighborhood.”
She smiles. Unlike any other customer, she doesn’t seem to care that I’m haphazardly ringing up an item a minute. She seems happy for any excuse to linger. She sticks out a hand in my direction.
“I’m Cassidy,” she says.
I look at her hand, momentarily unsure of the appropriate response to anything. I reach out in return, crinkling the bag of Funyuns with my movement, completing the handshake.
“I’m Adam.” She takes her hand away first, and I ring up the last of her snacks. “I’m sorry you got fired,” I add, because it seems worth repeating.
“It was my fault,” she says, an admission that surprises me. “I mean, I appreciate that, but yeah, I fucked up. I fucked up an assignment, and then I lied about fucking up the assignment, and then my editor found out—but like, of course she did, she’s been doing this shit longer than I’ve been alive.”
“An assignment?” I picture a test, a book report, though she must mean something else. “What did you do for work?”
“Oh, sorry, I was in magazines, like, book…journalism? It’s hard to explain. My degree is in English. What about you?”
“I didn’t go to college.”
“Oh, yeah, of course not,” she says, which makes me feel neither better nor worse. “So you’ve always worked in places like this?”
“Yeah, pretty much. I haven’t been at this place that long, though.”
“How long have you lived in the city?”
“Six weeks.” I’m embarrassed to say this out loud, but Cassidy looks delighted. She leans further over the counter, pulling the neckline of her T-shirt down another inch.
“Six weeks? Holy shit. I thought I was a newbie, and I’ve been here almost two years. Where did you move from?”
“Akron. It’s in Ohio.”
“A Midwesterner! That’s so funny, I’m from Pennsylvania. And not like Philly, more like Mechanicsburg. I know it doesn’t really mean anything, but still, I like meeting people who moved here from farther away, too.”
“Yeah,” I say. I don’t know where Luis or Steven is from, anything concrete about their personal lives, their pasts. “Do you miss your family?”
“I do, sometimes. I haven’t told them anything about what happened at work. I’m scared as fuck to have to tell them, and ashamed, and a whole bunch of other things. I’m worried that they’ll demand I come home. I’ll probably have to, if I’m being honest, if I can’t find another job, since there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to make rent. So I miss them, but soon I might wish I’d never been born. Do you? Miss your family? Have you had the chance to miss them yet?”
“Kind of. I mean yes. It’s just my dad, really.”
“Your mom left you?”
“No, she died.”
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” Cassidy lifts her head off her arm, looks into the security camera above the register, and waves. It’s pointed down to where I sit, not out at the store, which tells you something. I don’t think it’s on, but I don’t take my chances. When she turns her head, I think I see a smudge behind her left ear, but then I see that it’s actually a tiny tattoo of an opened book.
“It’s okay.” It’s not, but. “She died a long time ago.”
“But you probably still miss her.”
“I do.”
“I bet.”
Cassidy looks expectant, still in search of a story despite what she did to her last one. I rip one of the black plastic bags off the rack on the wall behind me and start putting her things in there, cans first in their narrow paper silos. “Your total is $15.87.”
“Christ, I forgot I was going to have to pay you! I’m such a fucking mess, forgive me.” She laughs as she pulls a twenty from her wallet, doesn’t even try to make the change. Most people don’t. I give her what she’s owed and she drops it loose into her purse, waves away the receipt.
“I’m glad we met, Adam,” she says. “You’re friendly. I feel like I needed this.”
“Thanks,” I say. It’s not in my vocabulary to return the sentiment, to say that things happen for reasons, that people come into your life when you need them, because you need them, then leave in a similar way. “I hope you find a new job soon.”
She barks a laugh that echoes off all the metal in the store. “Yeah! Thanks, me too. You know what they say—if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. And if you can’t make it, you can always kill yourself. That’s what I would add.”
The skin on the back of my neck prickles.
“I guess you’re right,” I say.
“Sorry, was that fucked up? I’m not going to make a pit stop at the Hudson, don’t worry. Or jump in front of a train—god, can you imagine? Not tonight. I’ve got booze to drink.” She walks toward the door, more buoyant than she was however many minutes ago when she walked in. “Good night, Adam.”
“Good night, Cassidy.”
She seems thrilled that I remembered her name, and she smiles wide as she walks out, heading south on Northern Boulevard. I check the clock and find that not that much time has passed. I take a rag from under the counter and start wiping it down. I know I’ll never see her again, even if I lived a whole lifetime in the city, and so did she—it’s all just coincidence.
Like what she said, that was just a coincidence, too. I agree with what she said about the train, but the river, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t want to die in a way that makes hundreds of strangers hate me for screwing up their commute, but the river would be quiet, easy. Easier. There are no truly easy ways, but some are better than others. I’m glad I kept this all to myself, though, even if it would’ve been a way to make conversation. I don’t think she was serious. I think I would’ve been able to tell.
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Nina Palattella is a writer, editorial assistant, aspiring interesting human, and emo rap enthusiast. Her works of fiction and poetry have also appeared in Scribendi, Luna Negra, and What Rough Beast. A native of Erie, Pennsylvania, she now lives in New York City.
Instagram and Twitter @ninaepwrites. |
