Lynn Strong - Hold Still

Ellie squeezes Jack’s hand.

“You like ’em?” It’s the first time the woman’s spoken. She’s standing close to Ellie. She smells like must and cigarettes, and the mold that grows in sheets left in the wash too long.

“I do,” says Ellie, turning toward her. “They’re very beautiful.”

The woman nods. “Thanks, yeah. It’s my real passion.”

Cooper looks at her and she shrugs and nudges Ellie, leaning in close so Jack won’t hear. Her elbow sticks sharp in Ellie’s rib. “And it helps cover the other business I do.”

Meth, thinks Ellie. Fuck. Her fingers itch, but she can’t mention it. She’s never tried meth, can’t admit any agency in this whole thing.

She looks quickly, nervously, at Jack.

The stench of chemicals is making Ellie dizzy. She stares hard at a purple glass alligator, wondering at the tiny perfect scales. She tries to think of how to not get high. She tries remembering how she got here, tries forcing herself to accept that she chose to be standing in this place, that she chose to bring Jack with her, that she is stupid and fucked up.

“But that’s not what you all want,” the woman says, looking back at Cooper and then at Ellie; she has not once looked down at Jack. There’s a large gray plastic chest of drawers and shelves across the back wall of the garage and the woman very methodically goes through a drawer at waist level that Ellie sees is separated into lots of small glass-covered squares. The woman pulls out a plastic bag and nods toward it, facing Cooper.

She looks at Jack for the first time, “Sciatica, sweetie,” she says, winking. “The boy and I both got it bad.”

Ellie pulls Jack to her.

Ellie counts, one, two, three, four, five, six through the clear plastic. Six. White-clean, one inch across, an eighth of an inch thick. She can see the stain on Dylan’s parents’ ceiling perfectly, the browns and blacks, the way they stuck to, settled down into, her eyes. She thinks of asking just to hold the pills. She doesn’t have to bring them with her. If she can see them, feel them close to her, that will be enough to keep her good.

She keeps counting as the bag moves from one hand to the other, as Cooper steps farther from the woman. Onetwothreefourfivesix.

Cooper looks over at her. She knows she’s grinning. She steps farther from Jack again. Cooper nods at the old woman. He reaches into his back pocket and takes out a large wad of cash. He closes the pills into a fist. The old woman begins counting out the cash. Ellie counts with her and then counts six again. Cooper’s hand reopens. There’s a line along it, where the skin lightens. It goes from dark, dark brown to beige. She steps one step closer to him. He makes a fist again.

“Fine,” says the woman.

She goes over to the shelf and picks up the purple alligator, careful, and hands it to Ellie. The glass is as thin as Ellie thought it would be, almost weightless, but it doesn’t shatter as she holds it in her hand.

“It’s a present,” says the woman. Ellie smiles, worried that she’ll cry.

“Thanks,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

The woman reaches up and touches Ellie’s cheek. The feel of her skin: cold damp wax paper. “Be careful, baby,” she says.

Ellie shudders and steps back. She looks again at Cooper’s too-tan fist. She runs her thumb along the alligator’s scales.

It’s dark out and cold. Maya puts on tights and shoes, her windbreaker and a band around her head. Stephen’s out and so is Ben. She brings a Metro and a credit card. She always does this when she doesn’t have a plan for where she’ll go or when she’ll feel like stopping, though she does, tonight, have an idea of where she might end up. She retraces the run she did with Ben just days prior. It’s different, though, in early evening. People, almost every one of whom looks younger than Maya, walk in packs of twos and threes down Smith and Court Streets. Smokers stand outside of restaurants puffing slowly, their hands chapped from the cold. The smells are different also. It’s dinner: instead of bacon, it’s french fries and grass-fed burgers, pizza slices, Thai spices, and the bitter stench of beer. She brushes shoulders with the groups that take up the whole sidewalk. She runs out into the street, hugging the parked cars along the bike lane, the cars in the street going past so close sometimes that she could knock their rearview mirrors out of place with her elbow or hand. Once she’s crossed the bridge, she goes east. She heads uptown through Chinatown, not willing to get close to the water yet. More smells, more people: raw meat, salt, lo mein noodles, the screaming of the street vendors as she reaches Canal. In SoHo, she gives up on Broadway. The packs of people walk in swaths of six and seven, shopping bags over their shoulders, tourists not paying attention, standing in line for street food and stopping to take pictures of lights and stores. Maya heads farther east to Lafayette and then to the numbered, almost to the lettered, avenues. She’s at Astor Place before she knows for sure where she’ll end up.

She wants to knock on Caitlin’s door and be taken in; she wants to talk about her book, to pretend, just very briefly, that she’s hers.

She’s at a stoplight, legs still moving, toes bouncing off the pavement; it’s just behind her, quiet, at her shoulder: “Maya?”

It isn’t Caitlin, though.

The voice is timid, unfamiliar. Maya almost runs the other way. She knows it’s her only because the hair is there still, falling in her face a little, thick and knotted behind her ears. There’s no baby this time. Maya looks quickly for her, underneath the coat Alana wears, but Alana’s bundled up and looks much smaller, though as she comes up closer to Maya, she’s retained her height and must turn her head down to look Maya in the eye.

“Alana, hi,” Maya says. She is suddenly painfully aware of her shoes and tights, her too-thin legs. She’s not used to seeing people when she’s running. She’s used to, those few times she does recognize someone, running fast enough, averting her eyes soon enough, to avoid having to interact.

“I was running,” Maya says, because Alana still looks down at her but doesn’t speak.

Alana nods.

Maya watches two girls behind her share a cigarette. They hold the tip close to their lips in the exact same way, deliberate, pretending, long drags and short puffs out, playing at a thing they can’t quite shape.

“I just left her with him,” Alana says. She’s crying now and shakes her head. “I just couldn’t take it and I left.”

“Oh,” Maya says. She wants to tell her that she’s sorry, help her, lead her back to her apartment, and hold the baby to her chest.

Alana grabs hold of her hair, one heavy chunk held with both hands. “I wanted. Fuck. I don’t know. I needed to be a free a while, you know?”

“Do you want. .” Maya stops. They’re standing in the middle of the sidewalk. People brush past, and Maya feels them look. “Let me buy you coffee?”

“Yeah,” she says, shrugging. “Sure.”

They duck into a place on the corner of Ninth Street. It’s dark, with small round uneven tables. A cappuccino machine whirs. “Coffee,” Maya says.

Alana orders tea.

They sit far from the counter, in the back corner, farther from the door. Alana places her elbows on the table and lays her face, briefly, in her hands. Maya waits and sips her coffee. There’s a small line of sweat down her back from running, and she feels a chill run through her as she waits for Alana to look up again.

“Honey,” Maya says again. “Your baby’s fine, okay? Just breathe.”

Alana cups the shallow mug with both hands and holds the steam up to her face.