Andrew Fox: Over Our Heads

At the door of our building, I nodded hello to Armand from across the hall and retreated from the scent of whiskey rising from his breath. Inside the apartment, I plugged my iPod into the stereo — a habit from when I’d lived alone and grown to fear what I might do with silence. I refilled Jeanine’s two-gallon water filter from the tap and, as I manoeuvred it on to the shelf, a shock of pain stole my breath. I closed the fridge door and leaned against it gasping, uncapped the aspirin bottle and swallowed three of them dry. Then I limped to the armchair and lowered myself slowly. I rested my phone on the arm and watched its screen not lighting.

Some hours later I woke to the sound of Jeanine clunking in the hallway. I gripped the arms of the chair and tried to stand but couldn’t. She lurched into the room with her hair slung over her eyes, one knee-high boot flapping in her hand and the other still clinging to her calf.

‘I’m trapped.’ She heaved the booted foot into my lap and braced herself against the bookcase. ‘Off. Help.’

I followed the line of her leg to a hard stomach bared just a sliver where her white shirt lifted. The flesh there was pale and taut, both powerful and fine. I swallowed the pain of raising my arms and fumbled with the boot’s tiny buckles.

‘You’ll never guess who I met,’ I said.

Jeanine kicked the boot into the base of the sofa and veered towards the stereo. She squinted at the screen of my iPod and spun the wheel to rack up the volume.

‘Neighbours,’ I warned, picturing the pleated face of the Russian woman in the adjoining unit.

‘To hell with the neighbours! Dance with me.’

Her fingers trailed in the air above her head and touched a current she let flow through her limbs. Her hair kicked about her face, her eyes closed, her lips parted. Who had watched her while I waited?

‘I can’t,’ I said.

‘What is it?’ She yanked the iPod from its cable and dropped to a knee at my side. Her eyes were wet, the pupils yawning. ‘What do you need? The doctor? I’ll get the doctor.’

‘I’m fine. I just need to rest.’

‘Okay,’ Jeanine swallowed. ‘I’ll just go puke real quick.’

Through the slats of blinds we’d hung together, I watched the darkened buildings of Ninety-ninth Street. The brickwork was chipped and traffic-blackened, and something white shone from a corner window. I tried to remember the feel of double vision, of a floor tile against my cheek. Jeanine emerged from the bathroom, throat pale, lip bitten. An orange trickle rimmed the collar of her shirt.

‘You’ll never guess who I met,’ I said.

‘You know,’ Jeanine drifted into the centre of the room, ‘it’s not really fair that I had such fun at my bachelorette and you never got to have a bachelor … No — what do you call it? — a stag party.’

Her hips began to sway against remembered music. She dug her thumbs inside the waistband of her jeans and tugged them over the points of her hips.

‘Jeanine,’ I said.

‘Would you have wanted something like this?’

She backed into me giggling and aimed a kiss across her shoulder. I rested my hands on her thighs and read the Braille of gooseflesh.

‘You’re freezing cold.’ I pulled the blanket from the chair back and held it over her chest.

‘I just wanted to dance for you,’ she said but her voice was distant, her body still, her eyes already closed.

Until dawn I sat holding on to her as she mumbled to herself and frowned. Her face was red from drink, smudged with make-up, free of worry. A week later we were married. Jeanine’s friends wore green and their husbands wore the ties I’d bought for them. We looked good together. Jeanine looked happy. The photographer wanted to take pictures of us in the park but it rained all day.

Thursday evening, five o’clock, Chloe and Julian belly up to the bar of the Terminal 3 Chili’s at O’Hare. Palo Alto is four hours behind them; after the layover, it will be two more hours to Boston. Julian orders wings and a beer, Chloe a neat vodka.

They have arrived just in time for happy hour, and the place is filling steadily. The bar stools, and the plastic tables divided from the terminal concourse by a low green fence, are occupied by professional travellers — men and women who pair compact flight cases with soft leather shoes, who curate Delta accounts with miles you could ride to the moon. Some fine-tune presentations on laptops. Others read books with titles like Your Greatest Asset Is … You! The women mask heavy eyes with subtle make-up. The men tug at ties, slap backs and yell at each other.

‘I think,’ Chloe says as Julian’s food arrives, ‘I’ve figured out what my problem is.’

‘Oh yeah? After all this time?’

Between Julian’s fingers, the wings feel gnarled and oily. Their skin is a hi-vis shade of orange. He gulps his beer against their spice and tries with a flailing arm to catch the attention of the bartender, a swollen old walrus with two dozen enamel buttons affixed to his red suspenders, but the walrus just stares right through him and nods at Chloe as she indicates the suds in Julian’s glass with a purple-nailed finger.

‘Am I invisible, here?’

Chloe shrugs. She is five-foot-three in heels, but every meeting is dominated at all times by her presence. Tomorrow morning, the two of them will pitch for a social media campaign worth somewhere in the high six figures, and she will take the lead.

‘I think,’ she says, pulling a celery stem from Julian’s basket and beginning to suck it, ‘that fundamentally, I find men repulsive.’

The walrus sets a fresh beer in front of Julian and slopes away. Julian drinks thirstily between mouthfuls of deep-fried flesh.

‘I mean, I like the idea of men, or of a man. The Platonic concept of man is something I can get right behind.’

‘Right, right.’ Julian adds to the dolmen of chicken ulnas teetering on his side plate.

‘But these earthly men with whom I have to deal? These shadows on the walls of the cave? They just leave me cold, I’m afraid. I find them … somewhat lacking.’

Julian leans back in his stool and wipes from his forehead a smear of grease vaguely scented with cayenne pepper.

‘That’s a shame,’ he says. ‘But wait, what about the chef?’

‘Drug habit,’ Chloe says.

‘Coke?’

‘Meth.’

‘Huh.’

‘You sound so shocked.’

‘I’m not,’ Julian says. ‘Were you?’

‘Not really,’ Chloe smiles. When she sips her drink, she reaches first for the straw with her tongue. Her vodka, slow and viscid, oils the side of her glass. ‘But what about you? You’re still out there, right? Sometimes? Still giving it the old college try?’

‘Still am, yes. Despite past experience.’

‘You, my friend,’ Chloe aims the celery stem at Julian and sights along its length, ‘are an optimist.’ She chomps down with a snap and speaks through a full mouth. ‘That’s what I’ve always liked about — Oh God!’

Her hand shoots to cover her lips. Julian turns to see what she sees. And there, billowing from the kitchen hatch, is a cloud of purplish smoke. Beyond it Julian can make out many tongues of blue and orange flame.

‘It’s a bomb!’ someone shrills, with sad inevitability. And with that, screams are torn from anguished throats, drinks spilled and plates sent crashing as people fumble for bags, slam laptop lids, elbow each other.

‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ the walrus shouts, and Julian is convinced in an instant of raw lung power that this man has spent time in the military.

A busboy in a white smock rushes through the swinging door and discharges a fire extinguisher. Light smoke replaces the dark and something somewhere sizzles.