Girl in Pieces (34 page)

Linus says, “That's so great,” and claps her hands. She pauses. “I'll bet Riley is psyched.”

I busy myself with the mop bucket, wringing out the grimy liquid from the mop. “Yeah, he's super excited.” I keep my head down, in case the lie is written all over my face.

“Mmm.” Linus gets quiet. She scrapes the grill slowly. “I see. So how much is he up to these days?”

“Excuse me?”

“How much is he drinking? Some of his prep work has been a little, uh, a little sloppier than usual.” She pushes a bucket of scrambled tofu to me and I peek inside. Ashes are dotted along the ridges of the puffy yellow hills. I'm ashamed for him, even though I know I shouldn't be. And I'm ashamed of myself.

He's usually asleep when I get to his house, if he's there, splayed on his velvet couch with a book across his lap, a lit cigarette still drooping in his fingers. The bottles disappear more rapidly from beneath the sink, are replaced just as rapidly. He seems to have stopped preparing for the Luis Alvarez benefit in the summer, the guitar in its case in the corner. The notebook of lyrics and sheet music is shoved under the couch. Sometimes he looks at me as though he can't place me. I've started to come in and watch him and smoke his cigarettes until my own chest feels sooty and clogged. Once, his hand on the screen door as I went off to work, he looked at me and mumbled, “I miss you being here with me at night. Hard without you.” And that felt good, but sad, and those things tug-of-war inside me until I want to bury my head in the dirt.

I avoid Linus's eyes.

“Charlie, I am an old, sober drunk. I've known Riley now for six years and I know his schedule.” She takes a deep breath. “He's in a downward slide and in that slide, we users will take everybody we can down with us. Because if we land in shit, we don't want to be alone in the shit.”

I stare at her. Linus, who's always helping people, always cheerful, an alcoholic? I guess that's why Temple never pours her anything to drink at night, now that I think about it. I try to picture her like Riley, but I can't. And what she says kind of pummels me, about him taking me down with him. I tighten my grip on the mop, looking at the dirty water in the bucket, like I can find some answer there.

She says, sadly, “Listen, I don't know much about you, and I don't want to pry, and I also don't want to judge, but staying with him is only going to be hurtful to you. I just have to say it. Can you see that, honey? Like, really see it?”

I jam the mop in the bucket and grab the broom, trying not to cry, because I know she's right, of course she's right, but I try to concentrate on my work, to push the anxiousness away. The band tonight was some sort of polka-punk trio who spewed confetti, and little bits are strewn everywhere. The tables in the seating area have been wobbly for so long, the newspaper underneath the legs is frayed and greasy-black. I should replace it soon.

“He'll be better. I know it.” I avoid her eyes, swipe at my own like it's just sweat and not tears. “I can help him. You shouldn't just give up on people.”

“Charlie,” Linus says glumly, “I've been in recovery for years. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that, I'd be a rich woman, and not working in some half-ass coffeehouse.”

This city is dry and stifling hot. Everyone keeps telling me I'll get used to it, that I'll grow to love it, that the winter will cool down a little, but the sun is a giant ball of fire that doesn't quit. Just biking from my apartment to the library downtown leaves me in a full sweat, with the underarms of my shirt soaked and my bike seat wet.

There are nine new unread messages from Mikey. It's like I'm starving him out and I don't know why. I don't have anything from Blue, but I write to her anyway, just one word,
Hey.
It's like reaching out to get a grip before you fall off a cliff, but no one is there.

But the last email from Mikey catches my eye. The subject line says
birthday/a while longer.
I click it open and read it.

You probably heard by now about me and Bunny. It's crazy, I know. We are going to be out on the road a little longer now—at least until November. I'm taking a leave from school. We're going to do that album up in N. California. There's a record deal, Charlie. I didn't want to be without Bunny any longer, and things just seemed right. When I get back, I have something really important to talk to you about. And hey, it's okay that you haven't written back. I understand. I hope you are okay. And, Charlie: happy birthday.

I stare at the word:
birthday.
Then I close down my mail and leave the library.

It takes me a good forty minutes to find the right place on my bicycle. I have to ride deep into South Tucson to find what I want. When I find it, a shabby little
panadería
that smells like sheer heaven, I choose the most cream-filled, icing-topped confection behind the smudged glass of the pastry case. After studying the coffee list, I ask for a
café de olla.
I sit in a sticky chair by the window, the sweetness of the pastry collecting in my mouth, the creamy, caramelly drink warming my hands. I wonder what Mikey wants to tell me that's so important he couldn't just say it on email. Maybe Bunny's pregnant. Maybe Mikey is about to have his perfect life with kids and a wife and a rock band and everything he's ever wanted, while I'm dehydrated and tired and should be drinking water, but I'm not, I'm drinking coffee, spending seven dollars and sixty-eight cents to wish myself a happy fucking eighteenth birthday that I'd forgotten all about.

I ride down to the gallery every morning and help Tony and Aaron with the show. The other artists are older than me, in their late twenties and thirties. Tony has them experiment with the placement of pieces while he walks around, rubbing his chin and thinking. He's decided not to frame my drawings, but to mat them simply. Tony was right: there are plenty of installations, including someone's childhood bedroom, right down to a complete set of My Little Pony figurines and her original ballet shoes paired with her adolescent Docs and fishnets. Someone else has spliced found video footage together: on one wall plays an endless loop of people and dogs jumping from diving boards. The colors are washed and dreamy; the jumpers seem to leap through thickets of watery sunshine, pasteled sky. A man with one half of his head shaved and the other in a tall Mohawk has glued eighteen beach balls together in a pyramid and painted crude words on each one. One woman kind of has paintings, but there isn't any actual paint on the canvas. Instead, she's glued squirrel pelts, crow feathers, and chunks of her own hair to the canvas.

A thin, angry-looking woman named Holly plans to lie nude on the floor. “I'm my own exhibit,” she explains to me, crunching her black thumbnail between her teeth. “Just having to confront the fact of my presence will be overwhelming for most people.”

I don't really understand how the woman's piece will work (what if someone touches her? What if she has to go to the bathroom?), but when I look over at Tony, he winks and whispers to me, after the woman has stomped away, “Holly's thesis defense is going to be spectacular. For all the wrong reasons, but spectacular nonetheless.”

They use words and phrases like
theory
and
actualized identity
and
constructed identity
and
core fragmentation.
When Holly saw me with my sleeves pushed up, she said angrily and earnestly, “You need to understand and examine your transgressions against societal norms.” She gripped my wrist. “Do you understand the act you've committed against yourself is fucking revolutionary? I'm going to make you a reading list tonight. You have so much to learn.”

I memorize what they say as I wander the gallery, following Tony's instructions, moving things this way and that, my hands covered in little white gloves, like Mickey Mouse. I think, no, I
know
that some of them are laughing at my drawings and me. They snicker at Hector and Manny's lumpy faces and bad teeth, Karen's hopeful smile. And when I leave, I go to the library and search for all their terms and words and phrases, working my way through them.

I don't want them to think I'm stupid, but I also don't want to
be
stupid, that's why I take the time to learn their language.

And when I look at my arms, I don't think
revolutionary
. I think
sad,
and
pain,
but not
revolutionary.

The next time I see Holly, though, I do think
asshole,
and that makes me smile all day.