Julia Pierpont - Among the Ten Thousand Things

“Open the goddamn door.”

He wanted more than anything to make them go away. The girl was crazier than he’d thought, and it was impossible to talk to Deb with this between them, this prop. But there was only the wastebasket, which was small and from which they’d be retrievable, and the toilet, which would clog the pipes. They should have kept matches. Instead he pulled open the small window that looked out over the gravel courtyard, the building’s glorified air shaft. An illogical thing to do, holding handfuls of paper out the window and letting go. He watched the pages fall and catch the air, wafting white into the dark blue, flitting and flipping acrobatically, one or two sailing into open windows.

In the current, the sheets turned as though someone were reading them. That he could hear them turning, flapping against the updraft, made him realize that Deb, in the bedroom, had gone quiet.

When he opened the door again, there was only Travolta, the cat, just wandered in, touching her nose lightly to the corner of bedsheet that had wilted toward the floor.

Jack carried the empty box out to the living room, where the dishes had been stacked and the spaghetti scraped onto a single hulking plate. Deb was standing in the middle of the room, running the charm at her neck taut along its silver chain and watching the time under the television. 12:44. 12:44. 12:44. 12:45.

“Hey,” he said. There was a streak of pasta sauce bloodying her neck. He tried to pull her into a hug, to squeeze her arms that way he did when a fight was over, that way that said, It’s me, remember? Never forget it’s me. I want to hold you, and you want me to. He squeezed her arms, reminding her that she had arms, and a body, and what had happened to her body?

“Don’t.” She pushed him off. It was exactly the only way she hadn’t wanted to let him touch her. She felt her arms shaking and thought, Good, let him see me shake. She wanted the whole room to shake and for him to know it was from something he had done. He saw her see into the box, with only a page stuck at the bottom. “Find the prize inside?”

“It’s history, Debby. Ancient.” He waved the box as he spoke, and the last sheet fluttered out like a final gesture. “Over.”

“You have no clue.”

“It’s been over.”

“You sad shit.” She spoke softly, but her teeth were sharp at him. “You know who gave it to me? They did.”

Jack bent over to collect the escaped page. “Who’s they?”

“ ‘Who’s they?’ People you barely know. Your children.”

He stayed stooping, face to floor, the paper in his hand. When he stood, things would be different. Or, things were different already, but this was pause, this space of floor, this page. Maybe bring some food on your way so we won’t have to go out. The girl had shown up with a can of Pringles and a watermelon, like she’d never bought lunch before, never heard of sandwiches. He’d laughed about it at the time, though he’d been annoyed, and she had laughed too, though he could tell she’d been embarrassed and might have cried if he hadn’t then taken two of the chips and stuck them half into his mouth so they made a duck’s beak. That was a long time ago, when watermelon was in season. It was about to be in season again. Year-old melon and a thing of chips: how he would pay for them now, the moment that he stood.

“Don’t act like you don’t hear.”

“I’m not.” He stood. He hadn’t made the decision to, only it was a reflex, to answer her, and now here he was. “Who told them to open it? Was it addressed to them?”

“How does that matter?” She pushed past him and carried the stack of plates to the kitchen. Dark in there, but she knew her way around. At the sink she ran the water. On low the faucet made a shrill sound like a whistle or a soft scream.

Jack switched on the light over the counter where they let mail pile up. “What’d they say?” She squeezed green soap wheezy out of the plastic bottle. Her answer was too quiet for him to hear. “What?”

“They don’t want to talk to you.”

“I can’t hear you,” though that time he could.

“I said they don’t want to talk to you.” She was scrubbing a pot.

“Christ — could you not do that now? I mean are you kidding, doing that now?”

She stopped the water and retreated to the bedroom, flicking drops from her fingers as she went. He thought she might have been about to cry, from how she’d kept him from seeing her face.

Travolta trotted out as they came in, the loose of her belly swinging side to side. Deb looked all around the room. “What did you do with it?” She looked into the bathroom and saw the window open. “You did not. ”

“I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t know what to do.”

“Go clean it up. Someone will find them.”

He told her he didn’t care who found them, the idiots in this building.

“ I care. I see these people every day. I ride elevators with these people, I see them at the goddamn supermarket.”

“Okay, all right. I’ll get the pages, and I’ll — I’ll throw them away.”

“It doesn’t matter what you do with them. They won’t ever go away.”

I hope that’s not true, he wanted to answer, but it seemed better not to say anything. “I’ll be back. Deb? I’ll be right back.”

She sat on the bed with her head bent and would not show that she’d heard.

—

The door to the courtyard was through a long hall in the basement, past the boiler room that hummed, the fluorescents bright over the white washing machines, the playroom with its plastic castle and alphabet foam floor. In the basement, as in the elevator, Jack lost reception, but got it back in the open air of the shaft, where he crunched across the gravel and stood amid the litter that was his words and dialed the girl.

The phone rang awhile. It was late, but she stayed up. He’d never been afraid of her, but he was a little now, waiting for her to answer, afraid of his own anger, of what letting himself be angry would do.

He never found out, because she didn’t answer. And so he went around picking up her pages, which were cool on the ground and made him realize for the first time that the night had grown a bit chilly.

i want to cum all around your mouth like lipstick and i want you to lick it up.

In some other context, he could have gotten hard, reading it all over. He thought if she had only sent the letters straight to him, he might even have fucked her again. But that wasn’t what the girl wanted, sex. Probably it wasn’t ever what she wanted. Women were always deceiving him about that. He was always lowballing their demands.

He got the stack of papers pretty near assembled, if worse for wear. Certainly there were a few pages missing, coasted onto ledges or into the bathrooms and back bedrooms of their neighbors. A nice surprise those would be for someone come morning.

Jack tipped back his head and looked at the square of sky the building made. Starless city sky, just barely distinguishable from the building, silhouetted black and dotted, as his eyes ran down the brick, with squares of yellow, cheerful warm.

He hummed to himself, to the night. Things would turn out okay. For him, somehow, they always had, and so they always would.

—

Upstairs again, Jack cradling the pages, there was a moment, pre-words, where they only looked at each other, and he wondered if maybe they were post-words, post all the things that words could do.

“You fuck.” Wrong. Deb had words. “I could leave you for this. For less than this.”

She was still perched on the bed, and he didn’t yet dare sit next to her. “I know you can,” he said, easing gently into the rocking chair, trying to keep from swaying.