Miss Misery (22 page)

Cath blinked first and opened the fridge. “Come on,” she said, opening a beer for herself. “Let me get you your iPod.”

The dip-making apparently now concluded, Cath grabbed my hand in hers and led me out of the kitchen and through the common room. Jesus' homeboy was there, sitting cross-legged on the purple and white throw rug. There was a futon as well, with a boy and a girl on it. Ben There was sitting moodily on top of a dining-room chair that had no table to keep it company. There was an enormous black and white poster of Ian Curtis on the wall and a dead spider plant on the windowsill. The room wasn't air-conditioned, so the street noise wafted up from behind the plant. Cigarette smoke was heavy in the air.

I nodded at Ben There, but Cath didn't stop for any of them. She led me up to and through a white door with a whiteboard on it that said, in giant blue block lettering, “HAPPY.”

“Is that a question or a statement?” I asked.

“Is what what?” she said, and dropped my hand. We were in her bedroom now, and she closed the door behind her. The lighting was muted here: soft, gauzy. The blinds were down and a small air conditioner hummed and shook in the boxy window. The room was smaller than the kitchen. Just a mattress spread out on the floor with a tousled red duvet on top of it and a cracked wooden desk groaning under the weight of a laptop, a typewriter, and a dozen coffee mugs filled with varying levels of room-temperature coffee and cigarette butts. The floor was littered with clothing—T-shirts, skirts, brassieres—which made sense, seeing as there wasn't a closet. My eyes lingered on a stack of well-worn paperbacks: Greene, Murakami, Didion, Pelecanos, and assorted manga. On the floor next to the mattress was an old Sony stereo system with loose CDs stacked high on top of it and a small shoebox filled with jewel boxes to its right. The walls were bare except for a framed print above the bed, a delicate painted image of a woman draped in black, and a photo taped above her desk.

“The word on your door,” I said, getting my bearings. “‘Happy.' Is that a question or a statement?”

“Oh.” Cath laughed. “It's neither. I just think it's the strangest word—don't you? Have you ever actually
looked
at it?”

“Well, all words look dumb when you repeat them enough.”

Cath plunged into the hysteria that was her desk. “Not
that
dumb.”

“Huh,” I said. “I guess not.”

“Here it is.” Cath extracted my iPod from the mess and handed it to me. It was none the worse for wear. “Even I couldn't have lost something in less than twenty-four hours.”

“Thanks,” I said, sliding it into my bag and noticing what else was in there. “I have something for you, too.”

Cath fluttered her eyes. “For little old me? You shouldn't have!” She kicked at a skirt on the floor and sat down on the edge of the mattress. “It's not like a mixtape or something corny like that, is it?”

I flushed. “Ha, ha. Of course not. Why would you say that?”

Cath took out a cigarette and pushed the shoebox of CDs over to me with her foot. “Take a look.”

I picked up the box and examined the contents. They were all mix CDs, each adorned with different masculine handwriting. They had names like
Everywhere
and
The Wish for Thunderstorms
and even
The New Sound of Missing You.
Some had elaborately designed covers. Others just had text.

Cath lit her cigarette and exhaled a little laughter with her smoke. “It's what boys do. They always do it. It's like they're genetically incapable of giving a girl something other than their own taste in music.” She pretended to gag. “I knew you wouldn't be that cliché!”

I was frozen, still thumbing through the CDs. God, how corny! How predictable! “How did you know?” I asked.

“Well, for starters, you already made me one.”

I looked up. “Excuse me?”

Cath reached under a pile of socks and winged a jewel box my way. “You know,” she said. “You—the other you.”

I caught the jewel box in my right hand and put the shoebox back down on the floor. In my hand was a mix CD made by me—but I hadn't made it. The cover was a photo of the Chrysler Building at night, unevenly sliced out of a men's fashion magazine, and on the CD itself a shakier version of my own handwriting had scrawled, “Nicotine Stains.” Classy title. My eyes scanned the track list: Cabaret Voltaire? LCD Soundsystem? Jandek? Who was he trying to impress, anyhow? The Boredoms? Royal Trux? Superpitcher? Freaking
Bauhaus?
This was terrible! Worst of all, it showed no flair for sequencing, for dramatics. I was embarrassed for my own good name. I couldn't take my eyes off it. “He made you this?” I asked, my voice cracking.

Cath was making a brave effort to straighten out her sheets. “Yup.”

“How? He doesn't even have a place to live, does he?”

“He made it here, actually. Just downloaded the songs when I was at work.”

I sputtered. “He made you a mix on your own computer?”

“Yup.” Cath stopped and turned to me. “What, does that break the boy code or something?”

“No, no. It's just…”

Cath laughed. “Look at you! You're actually offended! It's—”

I cut her off. “What offends me is the…I don't know, the lack of
style.
”

“Really? I thought the transition from Siouxsie and the Banshees into the Wiley/Dizzee Rascal remix was pretty good.”

Under my breath I muttered, “Dizzee Rascal remix!”

Cath was staring at me as one would at a mildly autistic puppy. “This makes you so mad, doesn't it? It's actually kind of cute.”

I dropped the CD onto the bed. “Whatever.”

Cath beckoned for me to sit next to her. “So what do
you
have for me? Frankincense? Myrrh?”

“Oh,” I said. “You know what? I think I'll give it to you later. It'll, uh, make more sense then.”

Cath frowned. “OK, but don't make me wait
too
long.”

I sat, gauging the distance between us carefully.

“So,” I said. “Now that I have my iPod, should I leave? I mean, you are supposed to be staying the hell away from any and all David Goulds. Or so you said last night.”

“Yeah,” she said, suddenly fiddling with the loose discs atop her stereo. “I meant it too.”

“OK,” I said. “What changed?”

Cath seemed flustered. “I don't know.” She hit
EJECT
and winged whatever had been in the stereo across the room, replacing it with something new. “Do you know this band? Dubstar? Totally cheesy and totally underappreciated. English.” Shimmery synthpop filled the small room.

“I don't know them,” I said.

“No one does.” Cath smiled. “I love them.” And she hummed along.

“Cath,” I said, remembering that I was the older of the two of us. “What changed?”

“Nothing changed, creepo,” she said without looking at me. “I just…wanted to invite someone to Stevie's party. I don't know many people in this city, remember.”

“Why me, though?”

She stubbed out her cigarette. “Because you're nice, I guess. And I liked dancing with you. And…you seemed lonely.”

“Huh,” I said.

“Whereas the other you just seems desperate.”

“What's the difference?” I asked.

“Probably a few drinks.” Cath raised her beer in mock salute. We clinked bottles.

“Yeah,” I said. “Probably. Still, I'm glad you invited me.”

“You know, I still wasn't sure I believed you until I saw that little scene in the men's room last night. About you not being the same person.”

“No?”

“Like Batman and Bruce Wayne, you know? No one's ever seen them in the same room.”

“We're not the same, Cath. How could one person be so…extreme?”

“I don't know.” She shrugged and lit another cigarette. “It doesn't seem that far-fetched to me.”

“Well, it does to me,” I said. “And I need to do something about it. But I'm all out of ideas.”

“Well,” Cath said, exhaling a stream of smoke. “I guess you could call the police.”

“And tell them what, exactly?”

“That you have a stalker? Identity fraud? Grand Theft Emo? I don't know.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Exactly.” I took a sip of beer. “Besides, I think Bloomberg shut down the local X-Files chapter. Budget cuts, you understand.”

Cath stuck her tongue out at me. “Funny.”

“Look, the truth is…I don't really care one way or another.”

Cath looked surprised. I was rather surprised myself. She said, “You don't?”

“No. I really don't. I'm doing too badly with my own life to worry about someone else's.”

“But he's you, right? Isn't that your life too?”

“No,” I said. “Why should it have to be?”

“It shouldn't,” she said. “Sometimes it just seems like you want it to be.”

We didn't say anything for a while after that—just sat there, drinking beer and watching Cath's cigarette smoke weave its way up to the ceiling. Eventually my eyes fell on the photograph Scotch-taped to the wall above the desk. I stood up and walked over to it.

“What's this?” I asked. “Is this you?”

The picture was of a three- or four-year-old girl who looked suspiciously like Cath wearing a Burger King crown and mugging for the camera. She was in the arms of a beautiful woman with sapphires for eyes and shoulder-length black hair.

“Yes,” Cath said in a strange, small voice. “That's me and my mom.”

The woman looked almost exactly like Cath, but somehow
fuller
: Her face was longer, and there was a strength to her gaze, her arms, her shoulders, that Cath lacked—a certainty of purpose, a gravity. I could see why Cath had chosen this picture to display.

“She's beautiful,” I said.

“She's dead.”

“I know,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

“It's OK.” Cath took a long drag of beer. “You didn't do it.” She gave me a half smile. “You're a freak, but I don't think you're cancerous.”

“How old were you?” I asked.

“Um,” said Cath. “I was eleven.”

“That must have been horrible.”

“It was. I mean, it is. But—and I think about this all time—what would be really strange is to have had her live. Like, sometimes I think about this shadow me that split off the minute she died. This totally happy girl that grew up with both parents and never went through a bad period or being such a bitch.”

“There's that word again.”

“What? ‘Shadow'? ‘Bitch'?”

“No,” I said. “‘Happy.'”

She laughed. “Right.”

“But you get along with your dad, don't you? He seems like a good guy.”

Cath's face melted a little, like I had been holding it too close to a flame. “He's the best guy. He's wonderful. He put up with
everything
—the times I ran away, the times I came home high or drunk or with funny-looking cuts on my arms. I mean, in high school there would be weeks when I wouldn't talk to him. Or if I did I would just totally curse him out. And he would just shake his head and smile to himself. He never stopped making me breakfast. He never got mad.
Ever.
And eventually I stopped trying to wind him up, because what's the point?” She sucked in nicotine and sputtered. “God, he's so good at being a dad—at being
my
dad. And look at me now—I still left him.”

I sat down again. “Cath, that's what kids do. They leave. They have to.”

“I know.” She rubbed at her nose and then at her eyes. “It's just…”

“What?”

“When we're together we just have this…what do you call it? Banter. Like, that's how we communicate. Like I'll come home from making out with a boy and covering the entire downtown area with stickers that have random words printed on them like ‘roar' or ‘lion' or whatever, and he'll be asleep on the couch listening to his batshit crazy modernist classical crap. And he'll pretend he wasn't asleep and then he'll pretend that he wasn't waiting up for me. And we'll do this dance, and I don't have to tell him what I was doing because he knows, and he doesn't have to tell me he loves me because I know. But we never say anything, you know? We never say it.”

Cath's face was red now and her eyes wouldn't leave the floor. She placed her cigarette on the edge of a mug that had a picture of a bear on it, and I watched the fire eat away at the filter. The music was still playing—it was cheerful and bouncy and totally inappropriate.