Amy Gustine - You Should Pity Us Instead

Brian had been off work for two weeks, having taken a leave of absence from his job as a commercial pilot. Before that he was doing overnights to New York and Detroit, and he couldn’t say when he’d last seen Jocelyn, though he did know it was before his arrest.

They’d met at the complex’s pool, where they both liked to do laps in the tolerable heat of twilight. Jocelyn swam every day, straight from taping the evening news, while Brian made it only when he wasn’t flying. They swam in opposite directions. “This way it doesn’t feel like we’re racing,” she said, squeezing her nose empty of water with her thumb and index finger in a cute, ladylike way. She never acted wary, as he expected her to, because she was on TV and he wasn’t. It didn’t seem to occur to her she might be the target of weirdos and stalkers. When he pointed this out, she laughed. “You aren’t the type, and I’m pretty good at spotting things like that.” It was the uniform — captain’s hat and double-breasted navy jacket with four gold cuff stripes and six gold buttons. People had to see you in it only one time and they’d put their lives in your hands.

Last year Jocelyn broke her leg and Brian had carried her groceries and laundry and driven her to work while she was still on painkillers and couldn’t drive herself. Still hobbling around in one of those black boots, her cast cut down to below the knee, she made him dinner as a thank you. While she cooked, he walked around her living room. She must have noticed his expression because she laughed, a little embarrassed. “I know. It’s bright. Turkish monarch moves to Soho.”

“I like it,” Brian said. “It’s a hell of a lot better than tan and turquoise.”

On the balcony, mindful of being caught peeping, Brian sat back down. Jocelyn hadn’t delivered the news since he’d been off work. If she was on vacation, why hadn’t he seen her at the pool, or passed her coming and going? It was possible she’d taken a trip, but why would she leave her suit out? Maybe she’d heard about his trouble and was avoiding him. Maybe she was scared of him.

Under the Phoenix sun, Brian’s jeans and long-sleeved shirt felt like a suit of armor sweat-welded to his skin, so he gave up and went inside, to the opposite problem — too-cold air conditioning, the annoying hum of the fan that never turned off. His apartment had come furnished, castoffs from another pilot who moved out to get married. Brown leather sofa with enormous saddlebag arms. A pine Adirondack chair with cushions in the ubiquitous, threatening Navajo pattern of expanding triangles. Scarred pine coffee table. Cut-pile, tan wall-to-wall carpeting and turquoise drapes. Besides toiletries and clothes, the only thing Brian brought with him was the faded director’s chair. That ought to make prison a simpler affair.

Taking up a pad which bore the flight carrier’s logo at the top and their slogan— Travel made good again —across the bottom, Brian sat down on the couch. After thinking a moment, he wrote, As you might have heard, things haven’t been going well for me. I promise, though, I won’t bother you if you don’t want to be my friend anymore. So I hope to see you around just to say “hi” and be relaxed where you live. Brian.

And be relaxed where you live? He crossed out that part, reread the note, then copied the edited version onto a fresh sheet of paper, went outside, and walked the ten feet of squeaky metal planks that separated his door from Jocelyn’s. As Brian leaned over, ready to work the note into the generous gap between the door and the frame — a gap he counted as another reason he hadn’t bought a house here: what kind of craftsman could the desert produce who didn’t need to guard against bitter cold, furious hurricanes, or sneaky earthquakes? — the lawyer’s admonishment made him pause. Just the daily necessities.

Brian straightened up. Maybe Jocelyn had started seeing that guy again, or someone new, and was staying at his place. But wouldn’t she have her car there? He raised his hand to knock, then stopped. Even if she wasn’t avoiding him, she probably knew about the arrest. She was in the news business, after all, though his story had not garnered enough attention to appear on TV, thank God.

Brian reread the note, went back to his apartment for tape, then left it hanging on Jocelyn’s door. If the note disappeared it meant she was safe and he’d let it go. If the note didn’t move, he would call. Maybe screw up the courage to knock. If that yielded nothing, he’d have to ask around the complex. But Brian didn’t know any other residents. They might not even recognize him. In the desert, where construction of gated communities never stopped, dozens of people transferred from these holding pens to their fake adobe two-cars on the last day of every month.

Brian walked back along the squeaky planks, wondering how long until his father called to find out what the lawyer had said.

Jolly for Jocelyn. The nickname originated in infancy or toddlerhood and stuck. Obi didn’t remember why. As a child she wasn’t particularly jolly, but she wasn’t glum either.

After the medical examiner had cleared her body for burial, they flew Jolly home. “We’ll bump you over and put her where you were going to go,” Karen said, referring to Obi’s burial plot as if it were a place setting. “That way Jolly can be between us.” She nodded at this plan to protect their daughter in death as they hadn’t in life.

Karen also made plans to clean out Jolly’s apartment, booking them a hotel in Phoenix, but when Obi insisted on driving instead of flying, she refused to go. “I can’t sit in a car for four days. I have to get this over with.”

Karen preferred to chew her pain hard and swallow it quickly, while Obi let it dissolve on his tongue, the bitter flavor stored permanently, he feared, in every taste bud.

At the hotel, he signed the credit-card receipt, guessing Karen hadn’t even looked at the room rate. Five hundred a night. He handed the signed charge slip to the clerk, fighting the urge to offer more, all the cash in his wallet, everything in their checking account. He might have handed over their 401(k)s if he’d known how. The woman, a brunette in a cheap red suit coat and navy blue pants, directed him with a polished finger down the hall. He carried his bag up four flights, suddenly repelled by the thought of elevators.

In the room, undyed hemp drapes framed the bright sky and the insistent mountain. Obi shut the drapes, dimmed the lights, took the coverlet — quilted squares of expanding triangles in rust and turquoise — off the bed, stuffed it in the closet, and turned on CNN, knowing it would sound the same in Phoenix as it did in Toledo. He felt dizzy because he hadn’t drunk anything yet today, so he opened the warm bottle of water he’d bought in New Mexico, drank it in two long gulps, used the bathroom, washed up, and left for Jolly’s place, unwilling to face going to sleep tonight without this part over.

The method: pills. The reason: no one knew. Not her GP, who, when Jolly shattered her leg falling down a flight of stairs, had prescribed the narcotics she overdosed on. Not the medical examiner, who’d looked for evidence of injuries on her body to suggest an abusive relationship or foul play. Not the police, who claimed to have interviewed all her friends and colleagues. Who had supposedly searched her apartment. They claimed there was no note. Obi didn’t believe them. He would find something. They just didn’t know how to look. During the long, quiet days on the highway, he had imagined a dozen types of code she could have used, from food arrangements in the cupboard to highlighted passages in the messy stacks of romance novels she always had around.