The Stud Book (43 page)

This one was hot inside, ready for hot yoga.

She pushed her way through the clusters of drinkers. Humble looked at Nyla like she was coming to check for his hall pass. That ache clawed her side.

She sidled up to the counter in a slim space near the servers’ station, near the cut limes and lemons and tiny onions. She wedged herself in next to Humble, still running her fingers over the buttons of her old cell phone.

Her heart was pounding, the bar was loud; she put her mouth next to Humble’s ear. “Order me whatever you’re having.”

He gestured at the bartender, the slightest movement of one finger, like a king.

Then she thought twice:
the baby
.

She pulled him close again. “Change that. I’ll have a soda.”

He said, “You’re sure?” His voice found its way through the noise more easily than hers, as though the whiskey on his breath brought it over.

She didn’t want a soda. Would one whiskey hurt her baby? Her hands were shaking. Her heart was a knot. “No. Never mind. What you’re having,” she said.

Humble had no idea yet what was up ahead, what it means to love a baby who grows into an adult. Nyla said, “You’re at the easy part.”

He turned toward her, raised an eyebrow, and raised his glass.

She said, “Don’t ever let your daughter out of your sight.”

He heard her words as a joke, smiled in response, and swirled his drink. “She’s out of my sight right now.”

“That’s where it starts,” Nyla said, ready to cry.

The bar erupted in a cheer. Her words were drowned out. Cups raised! What happened? Everyone drank. A short girl gave Humble a hug from behind, and he raised his glass. Nyla looked for the game on TV, but saw instead a woman in a strapless dress with her graceful neck slit, and a serious man in a good suit giving her the onceover. He played with his keys in his pocket. The dead girl looked like Arena, gangly in the elbows, a glossy ponytail. That was it. It was too much! In the middle of the cheers, the drinks, and the drunks, Nyla found her phone and dialed 911.

T
he next morning, at the end of his ten-thirty break, under a pale lemon sun and the haze of city air, Ben left Nordstrom with a silver shopping bag the size of a slim lunch box. The bag twirled from his fingers in the breeze of the traffic’s wake. He shifted to his serious visage—his office job face—and put a fast stop to that twirl. He folded the bottom of the bag, rolled it up, and tried to shove the thing in his blazer pocket. It was almost small enough to fit; his pocket was nearly big enough. He was still manhandling his way through the impossibility of that volumetric problem as he crossed the street to Pioneer Square, “the city’s living room.”

Every brick in the square had the name of a donor pressed into it, somebody who’d paid for that privilege and so funded building the space.

A flock of gutter punks had settled on the orange bricks, their dingy asses covering the names of Portland’s philanthropists. They leaned against a slice of wall—a wall that served as nothing except a place for street kids to lean. One of them wore a leather hat, a dog collar, and army fatigues. Others were in torn jeans and flapping coats, their hair half-dyed, half-fried, with a pit bull on a rope. Ben
stepped into the square, and as soon as he let go of it, the silver bag fell out of his pocket onto the bricks.

The bag spit out its decorative tissue and unleashed a plastic disc like a hockey puck that spun slowly in widening circles.

It was high-grade, talc-free, mineralized loose powder, and that didn’t come cheap; Ben ran after it. It was a gift to himself, an effort to even out the blotchy skin of crying all night about the loss of their dog.

It was an effort to even imagine talking to anyone about that particular sadness, and to pretend he was fine.

He tried to step on the compact as it rolled, but he missed. He chased after it. People moved aside, raised their eyebrows, and held their satchels and purses and bags. He swung his foot again, in a dance, and strangers danced, too—they danced away, that is; he felt their eyes on him and hated to be the center of a minor scene, but this time the powder lost and—
smack
—he knocked it to the ground.

The gutter punk with a dog on a rope threw a burning cigarette into the crowd. The punk didn’t deserve a dog; the dog deserved better. The cigarette skidded and stopped near Ben’s feet, near his hockey puck. The gutter punks didn’t crack a smile; that cigarette smoldered their contempt.

Ben tugged at his collar. He was clean and crisp and on his way to work. What was so wrong with that?

His face had healed, sure, but it didn’t look right to him anymore without the war paint. He’d grown used to seeing himself with diminished pores and highlighter along his brow bone. It was a good look. Why didn’t all men do it? Makeup—hadn’t those gutter punks heard of
A Clockwork Orange
? All murderous boys loved makeup.

Ben had been cool once. Hot enough to get laid, anyway. He asserted this to himself and silently debated with the punks like they mattered.

Maybe he wasn’t fooling anyone these days about his coolness quotient, but he liked himself better behind the Lancôme mask.

The MAX train cut him off at the corner as he started across the street.

The doors slid open, people poured out, and in that crowd he saw Arena. She was tall and pale, and she stepped onto the bricks of the square and squinted into the sun. He was right in front of her, a
few feet off, camouflaged by the masses. Why should a kid have such dark circles under her eyes?

He remembered the day she was born.

Now she looked tragic and gorgeous, and Ben had known women like that a few times in his life. Yes, he’d been cool enough to get laid by those very women.

Arena looked lost. Was she lost? He called her name. The train shut its doors behind her, then moved off. Arena’s hair blew into her eyes. She shook it away, saw Ben, stepped closer, and gave a timid nod.

He said, “No school today?” He heard his own words and it sounded like he was talking to a child. Ugh. He meant it as a good thing—a day off! Portland Public Schools had all kinds of in-service days, enough that it made the newspapers, because they couldn’t afford to keep the lights on, apparently. But the way Arena’s lips tugged down he could tell he’d said something stupid, definitely square, or straight, or whatever they called it now.

Was she expelled again? He couldn’t keep up with her drama. He shoved the Nordstrom bag back in his jacket pocket, where it didn’t fit and wouldn’t stay.

Arena said, “You’re wearing makeup.”

“What’re you talking about?” Ben’s chuckle sounded fake even to himself—mostly to himself. He was a weak liar. How could she see that expensive foundation?

There was one male makeup guy in Nordstrom. He worked behind the MAC counter, an Asian man who liked to run hot pink under his eyebrows and line his eyes in deep black. He looked ready to star in
Cats
. His was the sort of thespian outsider flair that gave men in makeup a bad name.

So Ben had gone to the Lancôme counter instead. He didn’t opt for eyeliner. His makeup was all about concealer.

When Arena did look at him, her eyes were big and brown, and conveyed sincerity and maybe grief; she’d known Ben her whole life. He said, “Okay, a little. To cover my broken nose.”

Arena’s lips were chapped. She said, “It doesn’t look broken anymore.”

“Then it’s working!” He forced a laugh again, like this was all easy for him.

She let her gaze drift down the street. Maybe she had somewhere
she was supposed to be. Like, high school? When she touched her face, her fingernails were dirty.

If she had somewhere to be, she didn’t seem to want to go there. What was wrong? Ben was no good at deducing, couldn’t tell if it was something big or small, serious or growing pains. Sarah would have it all figured out already.

Once, when Arena was maybe five years old, for some reason Ben had been left in charge of her. He had to watch her, this little kid, for a couple of hours. Thing was, he’d let her cut paper with scissors that were too big and sharp for a child. What did he know back then? She’d sliced her finger and bled all over the paper he’d given her, and she screamed. He remembered his panic when he didn’t know what to do. But he’d washed her hand and found a Band-Aid, and she loved that Band-Aid even though it was only a plain one the color of nobody’s real skin, the color of cheap makeup. She quit crying, and her resilience made him suddenly feel like an expert in child care. Then they’d walked to the store and he bought her a Klondike bar, and they sat on a dirty bench in the sun.

She needed a Klondike bar now. She needed a meal and a little under-eye brightener. He said, “They do makeup at Nordstrom. It’s free.”

She smirked and shrugged his suggestion away. Then it was like watching a silent movie, the way her face shifted, falling from smug to broken. Her mouth opened, ready to say something, but there were no words.

He fumbled for something to say, to find their equilibrium. Did she need help? He said, “Your art show’s tonight.”

She looked at him like she was drowning. She said, “Screw it.” After a shaky moment she spit out, “I’m not going.”

Nyla had been talking about the show all week. She’d sent out e-mails, sometimes at three or four in the morning. He said, “Your mom posted it as her Facebook status.” Maybe they’d laugh at this together, a shared perspective, a healthy distance.

“God.” Arena only twisted her hair. She held her own arm, hugged herself, and said, “I hate that school. I’m in the wrong classes. I don’t want to hang my work in the show. It’s fucking stupid.”

The way she said “fucking” was like the word didn’t come naturally. She was testing the waters.

Ben needed to say exactly the right thing. This was what it
meant to be an adult; it was his job. He’d never been a parent—wasn’t even a coach. Arena bit her lip, and her chapped lips started to bleed.

Ben said, “Listen,” and she turned toward him. She really did it—she listened. He’d set himself up now, as though he had advice.

Where was that Klondike bar? The Band-Aid. The comfort of a public bench.

He hated his job the way she hated school. Why go back? He was a punk rock runaway hidden in his own button-downs and Dockers. He tried again, and paced his words. He said, “Sometimes, we have to do things we don’t want to do.”

She looked at him incredulously. “You’re giving me the ‘Suck it up’ speech?” She took a breath so deep it raised her teenage chest. She started to leave.

He said, “No. Listen.”

He couldn’t believe it when she turned back—she gave him another chance. Why? She waited.

She made him feel like an adult.

Who was he? He was a fat kid who’d grown taller and thinned out, and now he was a man with a job and two ounces of overpriced cosmetics in his suit jacket pocket.

He said, “I understand.…” He aimed to be honest. He wasn’t sure what in him was even a little honest or clear anymore. He said, “I get it. I understand your destructive urges.”

Arena quit her nervous flickering and looked at him then. Her eyes narrowed. He’d said either the right thing or the wrong thing, and he was working on his next line when she asked, “What did you say?”

He said, “I mean, sometimes we all—”

She said, “No. Say it exactly. Say what you said.” She moved in closer. Her cracked lips were open, like she breathed through her mouth, like a kid with a stuffy nose, a child who had been crying, in need of Vicks VapoRub. He took his small, crumpled shopping bag back out of his pocket and found the tissue paper inside it. He used the white tissue to dab Arena’s bleeding lip.

She pulled her head away from his hands and said, “Say it.”

He tried to remember exactly. “I understand your … destructive … urges.”

Arena scowled, but then it wasn’t a scowl, it was tears, and her mouth folded and she looked sick, and her face flushed red.

She wrapped her hand around the bloody tissue paper in his hand and threw herself against him, crying into his shoulder. Her hair was a tangled smell of incense and skin. Another cargo load of people poured off the next MAX and stared as they parted around him and Arena, and Arena sobbed.

He touched the ends of her tangled brown hair. He said, “You’re okay.”

She tried to talk. She said, “My dad.
Marquee Moon
—” She coughed on her own snot and tears.

Had Ben inadvertently quoted lyrics? It rang a distant bell, Tom Verlaine. Maybe he’d heard that song. Maybe every sentence possible had become lyrics by now. He said, “Shhh …”

She said, “It seems so perfect—” and she choked again and couldn’t talk and Ben petted her hair and wondered if he’d sweat off his makeup. It was all too much, too intense, it was like he’d found a lost pet and couldn’t let it go and he didn’t mean to bring this animal home but he was in deep and didn’t know what else to do. Arena stayed wrapped around him. If she cared about what anybody thought, she didn’t let on. She didn’t wear makeup. She didn’t hide. Ben hid. Always. These days he wrote an ongoing script for the gutter punks’ judgments, for strangers, talking back to a world that talked around him, about him, about how he looked, and mostly about what his life meant or failed to mean.