Charles Bock: Alice & Oliver

Her index finger preempted, destroying Oliver’s answer in its larval stage. “Can’t you just believe that dear intrepid Beth will do her job?”

Oliver sat down next to Alice and stroked her hand. He had a flash memory, from not long after they’d started dating, back during a different reality: Alice at her sewing table, cutting the pattern for the pajamas she wore now. Forklifts beeped with faint accusations from the distance below. Alice’s oversize Edwardian cuff wasn’t buttoned. A black roach of a bruise sat along the thumb side of her wrist. Oliver’s eyes followed the faded purple, the sickly green, the eggish yellow. He peered down the sallow length of her arm, recalling the morning when the skin around her port had gotten infected, when an air bubble had inflated, brown and transparent, in the middle of her biceps.

Mister Blister Alice had labeled that balloon. But it had deflated. Her piggish bloat had also receded, her recognizable features returning, so that she looked like herself, thank fucking hell. Oliver stared at the close pattern — small blue-and-silver chevrons and fleur-de-lis — which covered the former blister’s location. For an instant he felt as furious as he’d been when the catheter’s slippage had been discovered. Those nurses should’ve caught the infiltration earlier, should’ve known better than to go into a weak vein.

“That receptionist,” Oliver said. “Figure she checks in how many patients an hour?”

“You’re not—”

“Humor me, Alice.”

“Oliver—”

“Figure a patient’s showing up to see each doctor in the office every fifteen—”

She cut him off, exhausted, barely a whisper: “Then call again.”

“You think sweet Beth isn’t going to be hightailing it out of work on a Friday afternoon? In a goddamn snowstorm ?”

“You just called. Look how well that worked.”

“We have to stay on top of them.”

“Oliver.” Her chin quivered. “I’m going to be dealing with this doctor for at least six months.” Her face flushed. “If the receptionist hates me before I’ve even stepped through the door—”

“It’s too much to ask you to make sure your doctors have your GODDAMN LEUKEMIA SLIDES ?”

For a fraction of a moment things on the other side of the room were still. But then it began, a shift in molecules, a stirring, a consciousness turning on, confused. The baby gathered, then belted, at the seismic peak of her infant lungs.

“Wonderful.” Alice rushed, struggling to rise, moving as quickly as her body would allow. “My hero.”

—

When they’d gotten engaged and first started looking for their own place, Oliver had assured her that it was a steal — this tiny trapezoidal industrial area, just north of the West Village, by far the best value for their buck. He was, to put it tactfully, insane. The Meatpacking District’s every daylight hour was dominated by dock thugs and frozen slabs; after dark, rotted zombie addicts held court with leather-collar sex club slaves and transvestite streetwalkers — the type of neighborhood that was superb for a night of slummy fun, Alice had no problem admitting that much, ordering the first round of shots, or shaming Oliver into doing the same. If the mood struck her, she’d be the first to hop on a bar and start dancing, and had no problems donating her bra (so long as it wasn’t one of her fancier wire-support ones) to some hole’s wall of fame. But as far as bringing a child into the world, as far as raising their infant, they’d have been better off if the area had been radioactive. Hell, for all Alice knew, it was .

Oliver felt differently. And this was tricky because he was one of those rare specimens: he actually followed up on ideas, possessing a special, almost preternatural talent for blocking out distractions, isolating a problem and breaking it down into smaller, solvable units. On a daily basis this could be annoying, it most definitely had killed more than a few date nights. But how else could he have successfully built a software and technical support start-up out of little more than underarm sweat and gum wrappers? Applying that same bulldog tenacity, Oliver came to her with a flowchart that showed distances to nearby gourmet grocery shopping and restaurants; he researched school districts, pinpointed the excellent zone they’d be in. Oliver went so far as to present her with a spreadsheet detailing possible upgrades to the apartment, options for what could be done with the rent money they’d save by living here. Equally unfortunate for Alice was that Oliver also had spent more than a bit of his childhood assisting his dad in odd jobs around the house. Meaning he was precise and crisp with a slide rule, knew the purpose of a flathead screw, how to find the load-bearing part of a wall for a shelving unit, even the dangers inherent in an industrial-size power sander. It also surely wasn’t a coincidence that he’d scoped out the Upper East Side location where skilled nonunion day laborers hung around mornings, waiting for someone to offer them work. Yes, with his piercing intelligence, his formidable collection of technical skills, and his nonstop hustling attitude, Oliver created his own black magic, a momentum that turned feasible what should have been idle banter — daydreams the two of them mulled over while in bed, lying there satisfied, one of them idly tracing a finger up and down the other’s inner leg.

Naturally, Oliver also happened to cross paths with some guy at a management company who needed quick revenue, and was willing to look the other way about a few pesky residential zoning requirements. Oliver had cajoled Alice, he’d harangued, promising to resand and refinish the wooden floors, install a fully operating kitchen with lots of counter space, erect one of those huge walk-in closets. Any demand she could imagine, he acquiesced, vowing to oversee or take care of it himself. And since the scraps of savings they had were basically his anyway, since Alice was already getting the wedding and going full-speed-ahead with her plans for a baby, if Alice hadn’t exactly given in on this front, neither had she stood in his way. What she’d done, she’d allowed herself to see what would happen.

Editorial assistants at glossy fashion magazines; assistant editors at midtown publishing houses; junior publicists; gallery clerks; massage school graduates; yoginis; gofers; photographers’ personal peons; retail sluts; the same neurotic, cooler-than-thou trailblazers who’d originally made hilarious and cutting remarks about the wisdom of buying a place in this neighborhood; who’d had first-rate original excuses why they hadn’t visited, or who’d conversely finished their last bites of brunch and gotten down to brass tacks, expressing their heartfelt concern about what Alice and Oliver were doing; time and again they’d stepped carefully, decamping from the warehouse’s freight elevator, always holding their breath so they didn’t get a full blast of the dried cow blood stench from downstairs, pulling at the collapsing security gate — and then they’d be hit smack-dab by that first, full gander: the obscene expanse of square footage, the cavernously high ceilings, the exposed bricks at once dilapidated and futuristic. They gasped, gaped, craned their necks for a better look. They were blown away, these friends who still commuted from outer boroughs where they crammed into shithole apartments with roommates they could hardly stand; who’d spent years fighting like savages to establish their professional and personal lives; who made a point of being impressed by absolutely nothing and positively nobody. They held slack the ten-dollar bottles of wine and five-dollar bouquets they’d brought as housewarming gifts. Friends that Alice had originally bonded with during orientation week at fashion school clucked their reserved approval for the thick steel cookware that hung from the rack in the center of the kitchen space. Plucked brows narrowed when they saw Alice’s pool-size designing and sketch table, her vintage sewing table from the nineteen twenties, the female mannequin form next to it. Tilda showed no compunction whatsoever about walking straight into Alice’s personal closet and letting fly with gutter curses. No better were the boyfriends, the husbands, and Oliver’s pals — junior traders from Wall Street, junior partners at midtown law firms, graduate assistants, PhD candidates, bookish band geeks, and/or dudes who were still figuring things out and working by day at bakeries or frame shops. Once they saw Oliver’s row of workstation terminals, once they found out how little Oliver’d stolen this place for, and how comparatively little the renovations had cost — palms smacked against foreheads. There had been more than one real live spit take. As if to rub it in, Oliver would roll up the Chinese screens to show off that wall of windows, the panoramic view, only faintly filmed with soot: the abandoned train track, the dilapidated piers, the shimmering expanse of the Hudson.