Tom Perrotta - Nine Inches

The walk is longer and more treacherous than she anticipated — almost no one has shoveled yet — and she doesn’t reach her destination until a few minutes after nine. She feels weak, a bit disoriented. There’s nothing about the Chosen house that marks it as a place of worship. No cross, no sign, no parking lot. Just a shabby gray Colonial with cracked asphalt shingles and a boarded-up attic window tucked between the Quik-Chek and the Army Recruiting Center on a busy stretch of Grand Avenue.

Rose doesn’t imagine outsiders are welcome at the service, and her determination falters. Maybe I should stand here until it’s over, she thinks. Give the girl the bag on her way out, tell her parents not to let her out of the house without a coat anymore. But then she notices the freshly cleared and sanded walk leading up to the front steps, the two shovels resting against the porch railing, and it all comes back to her: the girl’s blank face, her chattering teeth and chapped hands, her soggy kerchief and snow-crusted sneakers. And deaf on top of that.

You poor thing. It’s a sin the way they treat you.

And now she’s doing it, not even thinking, just marching up the steps, feeling strong and purposeful, reaching for the doorknob. Pulling it open. Stepping inside. The warmth and the faces. Oh my.

Rose has never seen anything quite like this. The floor is bare. No curtains on the windows. The Chosen are seated in folding chairs in a large, otherwise empty room, the men and boys in business suits on one side, the women and girls in kerchiefs and long skirts on the other, each one more drab-looking than the next. There are more of them than Rose realized — the room is packed, the air a bit close — and all their faces are turned in her direction, their expressions welcoming, as if they’ve been expecting her. A tall, bearded man rises and relieves her of the bag.

“It’s for the girl,” Rose whispers. “So she won’t be cold.”

“Thank you.” The man is wiry and hungry-looking, his suit jacket a little short in the sleeves.

Rose’s errand is done and she knows she should be going, but the bearded man is guiding her with one hand toward an empty chair on the women’s side, as though she’s an invited guest.

“Sit,” he tells her.

Rose obeys. She feels suddenly exhausted, incapable of arguing or facing the cold outside. The woman beside her, whom Rose recognizes from the Stop & Shop, greets her with a quiet nod. The Chosen girl and her sister are sitting two rows ahead, a little to the right. The girl glances at Rose, her eyes crinkling with worry. She looks a lot better than she did yesterday, her hair freshly washed, her kerchief bright and dry. Rose smiles back, clenching and unclenching her hands to speed their thawing.

As if a secret signal’s been given, the Chosen all turn to face forward, though there’s nothing in front of them but a blank white wall. After a moment or two, a soft murmur rises in the room, a strange melodic mumbling that fills the air like background noise at a party. It doesn’t grow louder, and it doesn’t die out; it just keeps winding around and around on itself, never resolving, repeating the same uncertain notes of praise and lament. Rose closes her eyes and listens closely. Hard as she tries, she can’t quite decide if it’s a prayer or a song she’s hearing, or just a lot of people muttering to themselves. All she really knows — and it comes to her as something of a surprise — is that her own lips are moving, too, her voice blending in with everyone else’s, the words tumbling out of her like she’s known them all her life.

THE TEXT ARRIVED LATE ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, AT the last possible minute.

Tomorrow morning, it said.

I cursed under my breath. I’d been planning on getting drunk that night, but work was work, and Kyle expected us to be available. You’d have to have a pretty good excuse for saying no, an infectious disease or a death in the immediate family. A potential hangover wasn’t going to cut it.

I stopped by his house around five to find out who I was and where I was going. Kyle was a junior at MIT, but he ran his business from home, while also doing his laundry.

He was down in his basement lair, playing Call of Duty on a humongous wide-screen with two ridiculously hot sorority girls — spray tans, frosted hair, glittery Greek letters on their tank tops — flanking him on the couch, watching the video-game action like they actually gave a crap what happened. I had no idea where Kyle found these girls — they didn’t look like they went to MIT — but there seemed to be a never-ending supply of them at his disposal.

“Yo, bro,” he said, glancing away from the screen for a millisecond. “Nice pants.”

“Thanks, man.” I was rocking my bright red skinny jeans from BR; Kyle owned the exact same pair, but they looked better on him, sleeker and more natural, like they’d been designed specifically for his body.

“Ladies,” he said, “this is my boy Josh. Josh, meet Emily and Elise.”

The girls said, Hi, Josh, in these bored, superior voices. I was just a high school kid to them, a primitive life-form. They probably figured I was there to buy some weed, or maybe score a few Adderall, both of which were among the many products and services offered by Kyle, Incorporated. They had no way of knowing that, far from being a customer, I was actually a valued, highly compensated employee, one of a small group of trusted insiders.

Kyle handed the controller to Emily, the smaller and blonder of the pair.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “Don’t fucking get me killed.”

I followed him into the laundry room at the other end of the basement — it was where we always conducted our business — and waited while he emptied the dryer. It smelled good in there, fabric softener and warm clean clothes. Kyle stood up and dangled a pair of panties in front of my face like a hypnotist trying to make you sleepy. They were pink with little blue hearts.

“Elise,” he said, in answer to my unspoken question. “The ladies appreciate it when you do their laundry. It makes them feel loved and respected. Gratitude is an aphrodisiac, dude — remember that when you get to college.”

I told him I’d keep it in mind. That was how we rolled — Kyle gave me advice and I took it if I could or filed it away for future reference. It had been like that ever since we’d met at the Pendleton School Summer Day Camp all those years ago, when I was a fifth-grader and he was a Future Leader, the most junior of the junior counselors. On the very first day, he told me that I needed to get myself some acceptable swim trunks, because the ones I had were totally ridiculous, billowing around me like a bright green oil spill when I stepped into the water. In the years that followed, he’d contributed a steady stream of big-brotherly suggestions and helpful hints: Dude, you need to start working out… . Ever think about getting yourself some contact lenses?… I hate to say it, bro, but your vocabulary is pitiful… . Don’t you think it’s time to start making some real money?

“How you doing?” Kyle tossed the panties into his mesh basket and eyeballed me up and down, the way my aunts and uncles sometimes did when they hadn’t seen me for a while. “Keeping outta trouble?”

“Pretty much. Just cruising until graduation.”

“Senior year.” He nodded with nostalgic approval, one eye partially obscured by his floppy hair. He had recently started wearing oversize hipster glasses that made his sharp, handsome features look even more delicate than usual. “I hope you’re getting your dick sucked. That’s what the sophomore bitches are for, right?”