Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

The hostess stand was near the door, across from the bar. Jorge, the daytime bartender, was also a stand-up comedian, and he liked to practice on Ruby while she sat and waited for people to come in. He was an okay bartender but not a very good comedian. The current bit was about how no one watched commercials anymore, and though Ruby wasn’t really paying attention, it seemed to have something to do with a bunch of old white guys sitting around a boardroom table complaining. Jorge was going to be a bartender forever. Ruby laughed charitably when he stopped talking, because she assumed he was finished. She had her phone behind the stand and was playing Candy Crush, level 24.

“Hello? Did you see him or not?” Jorge was drying off glasses with a dish towel, twisting and stacking, twisting and stacking.

“What are you even talking about?” Ruby glanced up from her phone.

Jorge pointed to the left corner of the window. “Look over here. You know this white kid, Casper the ghost? He’s been walking back and forth for like five minutes, just staring at you.”

Ruby shut her phone off and hopped down from the stool. She tiptoed to the end of the bar and peeked out the window. Dust was standing with his skateboard perched on his toe, leaning against the storefront of the Mexican bakery next door. “Oh, shit,” Ruby said, and scurried back to her post.

“You know him?” Jorge asked. “Do I need to go tell him to scram?”

“ Scram? Are you still pretending to be an old man? I can’t tell. No, thank you. I can handle this myself. I’ll be right back.” Ruby tossed Jorge a stack of menus. “Just in case.”

She tucked her hair behind her ears and pulled open Hyacinth’s heavy front door. “Hey!” she said to Dust. He was smoking and staring off into space, two of his favorite hobbies. “What are you doing, you stalker?”

Dust saw her walking toward him and smiled. He opened his arms wide for a hug.

Ruby smacked his hands away and crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you, and I heard you were working.” Dust licked the pointy edge of his chipped tooth. “I was around the corner — it’s not some weird stalker shit.”

Dust did have a friend who lived on Westminster. His name was Nico, and he grew marijuana in his closet and in the window boxes outside his bedroom. “Fine,” Ruby said. “Now you’ve seen me.” She didn’t move.

“So is that kid, like, your boyfriend now? Your little private-school ninja bodyguard? Looked kinda young for you.” Dust cocked his head to the side. “You don’t miss me?”

Ruby did miss Dust, sort of, but she would rather have been eaten alive by sewer rats than admit it. Mostly she missed his body, and that broken tooth. It was fun to talk to someone who knew how to flirt, and how to flirt while riding a skateboard. Harry had no idea how to flirt. That was entertaining, too, in its own way, but sometimes Ruby got tired of feeling like Mrs. Robinson. She had already decided that she would kiss Harry back if he ever tried anything, but now it was getting to the point where Ruby had to decide if she actually wanted to kiss him enough to do it herself. Whitman was small — if Harry had ever kissed anyone before, she would probably know it. There was no hiding anything — the whole school was packed so tight that you had to squeeze past couples making out by their lockers, not like in the movies, where there were bleachers and football fields and stuff. The back staircase was where you could see real action, and Ruby herself had done some serious business there. Harry Marx, on the back stairs? That would be like seeing Dust in an SAT prep course. It just didn’t compute. But maybe with some practice.

“I have to go back to work,” Ruby said.

“Text me,” Dust said. He winked at her and dropped his board to the pavement and was zooming away before she could say no.

Elizabeth didn’t like to think of herself as anal, but she did like things to be a certain way. She could have been an architect, if she’d cared more about math. It was why she was good at her job — there were so many offer sheets, comp sheets, pages and pages of contracts — and Elizabeth’s were always in spotless order. It just felt good, to have everything in its rightful place. She wasn’t sure about godliness in general, but if she were, then cleanliness would definitely have been next to it. She was organizing the guest room when she noticed that her storage boxes were in the wrong order. Everything was chronological — her childhood things, Andrew’s childhood things, Kitty’s Mustache memorabilia, files of old letters, Harry’s childhood things. The Kitty’s Mustache box was all the way to the right-hand side of the shelf, three spaces over from where it should have been, and the top had been put on backward. Elizabeth slid the box out and set it down on the floor.

She knew every piece of paper in the box: every press clipping, every photo. At first she saved things just because it seemed like a special time in her youth, but after Lydia died, it seemed more important than that. No one else had pictures of Kitty’s Mustache’s first practice, or of Lydia with her drumsticks sitting on a dorm-room floor. No one else had pictures of Lydia smiling, wearing a sweatshirt, with a ponytail. These were cultural artifacts. Like dinosaur bones, they were proof of previous life, and as precious to Elizabeth as her wedding pictures.

There were a few pictures missing — two band photos, including Elizabeth’s selfish favorite, the one where she thought she looked like a high priestess, with the dark lipstick and the long black skirt. She’d bought the dress for seven dollars at the Elyria Salvation Army, and it was so long that it dragged on the ground behind her, which meant that the polyester began to unravel and wear after a few months of constant contact with the sidewalk.

“Andrew?” Elizabeth called.

“Yeah?” It sounded like he was in the kitchen.

“Can you come up here?” She leafed through — there were three things missing total, she was pretty sure.

“Hey,” Andrew said, eating an apple. “What’s up?”

“Did you go through my pictures, take anything?” Elizabeth held up one of the band portraits. “Remember your flannel phase?”

Andrew shook his head. “God, I haven’t looked at those in forever.” He stepped into the room and plucked the picture out of Elizabeth’s hand. “Man, we look fucking cool. Right? Or do we not? You look incredible.”

“I think we do. Or did. I think we did. You still look like that.” She kissed him on the cheek. Andrew handed the photo back and took another bite of his apple, sending a juicy mist into the air.

“Don’t spray my memories,” Elizabeth said, wiping off the photo on her shirt. “It’s so weird, but I’m pretty sure there are some things missing. You don’t think Harry would have taken them, do you?” She lowered her voice. “Is he in his room?”

Andrew nodded. Elizabeth tucked the picture back in the box and stood up, dusting off her fingers. She squeezed past Andrew and knocked on Harry’s bedroom door. Once she heard his muffled reply, Elizabeth turned the knob and opened the door.

Harry was sitting cross-legged on his bed, an SAT study guide splayed open in front of him. He had his giant headphones around his neck, which made his head look shrunken, as if he’d gotten into a fight with a voodoo shaman.

“Hey, Mom,” Harry said. There were dark circles under his eyes. Elizabeth had never seen him look that way before, like he hadn’t been sleeping enough. She wanted to scoop him up in her arms and rock him back and forth, even though he probably weighed as much as she did.