Stewart and Jean (8 page)

Really, it was strange how familiar the store felt. If you raised a seagull from the day it hatched in some aviary in a deeply inland zoo, and then one day opened under its beak a sealed bottle filled with sea air, giving the bird a whiff, who knew what would stir inside it. The place had a smell, with a chemical crispness to it. Like a grandmother’s mothballed closet you would sneak your head into sometimes as a kid.

The guy behind the counter had mutton chops and a soul patch, and a long gray ponytail. His T-shirt was stretched tight over his big belly and tucked into his jeans. “Can I help you?” he asked, looking his cute customer up and down without quite being a dickhead about it.

Jean went up to the counter and said she was interested in something for home defense. The guy showed her a revolver. The main thing she noticed about it was that it didn’t look like the gun she’d shot Kevin with.

He was explaining stuff to her about the gun. She said, “Can it shoot through a door?”

He gave her a funny look, like how cute she was was no longer the primary thing he was thinking about. “Why would you want to shoot through a door?”

“Like, if someone were trying to break it down.”

“Depends how thick the door is.”

She told the guy that right now she was living in Queens, but that she was moving to Pennsylvania really soon, and asked if he could go ahead and start a background check using her current address.

No, the guy told her. It was illegal for him to sell a gun to someone out of state. But he told her about an upcoming Pennsylvania gun show where she would have no problem buying one. There would be private citizens there selling their goods—unlike licensed dealers such as himself, private citizens didn’t have to run background checks or anything.

By Monday, when she returned to work, the ball was already rolling for her to move to Stroudsburg in a month—she had appointments to look at a couple of places. It was exhilarating to be making such big changes so fast, and so impulsively. She’d decided to rent for the moment, instead of trying to buy. Partly because she objectively knew that applying for a mortgage on a lark would be crazy, partly because if she rented she could move sooner.

Marissa came by after lunch and stood over Jean, at her computer. “Want to go out for some margaritas after work? Or is Monday too early in the week to start drinking?”

“Monday is the perfect day for it,” Jean said.

They talked like they might go someplace nice and respectable but wound up walking west to Chevy’s at Times Square, laughing all the way at how trashy they were. The Mexican food was relatively cheap, for Times Square. The margaritas were big. The restaurant’s bright colors, noise, and plastic gaiety were fun to laugh at. “It’s better than some stuffy bullshit!” declared Marissa, gulping down her cherry margarita.

Jean had gotten a normal-flavored margarita, though they were both jumbo. “Hey, you don’t have to justify your love of Chevy’s to me.” Of the two of them, Marissa had been the more enthusiastic about going there.

Half an hour later they were both stuffed, with their plates still more than half-full, and they were each well into their second jumbo margaritas. Marissa had decided to mix it up and try a raspberry-flavored one.

“I love these things!” said Marissa, lifting the massive heavy glass up to her face. It wasn’t much smaller than her head. “Because they’re like my name. Get it?! Margarita, Marissa!”

“Oh, God. We’re going to get totally shit-faced, aren’t we?”

“No, no, no, I’m fine, I’m fine.” Marissa took a moment to regain control of herself, but also to drink some more. There was a lull, despite the blaring music, and on the other side of the lull they found the mood had changed. Marissa tucked her chin and looked up at Jean seriously; “How are you doing?” she asked. “With that thing?”

“With Stewart?”

“Is that his name? The guy from the bookstore? The Arkansan?”

“Yeah. Stewart.”

“Well?”

Jean drained the last of her margarita; the straw made a dry croaking sound, and she signaled the waitress for another. She was light-headed, if not frankly drunk. But she’d already gone too far to do anything productive tonight, so she might as well say fuck it and go all the way. When she turned to look across the table again, Marissa was still waiting for an answer, with her serious expression on. “I think I’m moving out of the city,” Jean said, trying to be breezy about it.

Marissa’s face fell. “Because of
Stewart
?” she said. “Jean, you don’t have to be scared of him! We can do something about him!”

“No, no, no.” Jean was flustered—she’d intended her comment as a change of subject. “No, it’s not that. I’m just moving to Stroudsburg. In Pennsylvania.”

“Well why would anyone move to Buttfuck, Pennsylvania unless they were being chased there?”

Thirty seconds ago Jean had thought she was stuffed, but now she found herself picking through her refried beans, lifting a forkful to her mouth, and swallowing it, only to have a reason to put off answering. She said, “Grass. Also, the gun laws are different there. So....”

Marissa stared at her as if she were not only crazy, but perhaps morally repugnant as well. “You’re going to get a
gun
?”

“Well. Why not?”

“If you think you need a gun then it sounds like you’re not doing so well with the whole bookstore-guy thing. It sounds like you’re scared of him.”

“Once I have a gun I’ll be significantly less scared. Besides, I’m not scared. I’m just trying to be cautious. Responsible.”

“If you think you’re unsafe then you need to call the police.”

“Yeah, well, except he’s not doing anything illegal. All right, Marissa? And neither will I be if I move to Stroudsburg and get a gun. Now can we talk about something else please?”

They gossiped about work through most of their third margaritas, but their hearts weren’t in it. Gazing on the last inch or two of her drink, slurring her words, Marissa said, “Wanna share a cab home?”

“You live in Brooklyn. I live in Queens.”

“Fuck.” Marissa gazed sullenly out the window at the taxi- and tourist-clogged street. It wasn’t even dark yet.

Jean had again started picking through her food and absently eating it. Also slurring her words a little, she said, “You know, the thing about having a gun....”

She stopped. Marissa waited for her to start again, eyes fixed on her, all ears.

Jean was evacuating her rice to the part of her plate already occupied by her half-eaten, cooled burrito. Keeping her eyes on the food, as if this were an operation of great importance, she said, “Having a gun, when you live alone someplace … I mean, you know, you’re allowed to defend yourself.”

“Sure.”

“And this way, it’s kind of like Stewart gets to choose.”

Marissa waited for her to keep talking and, when she realized she wasn’t going to, said, “Choose what?”

“Well, you know. The scary thing about Stewart is … I mean, it’s not even scariness. It’s just anxiety. Wondering, like, what’s he going to do? If he just wants to work at the bookstore and live in the city, that’s his business, I can live with that. But if he’s going to hurt me, I’d rather just find out that’s what he’s got in mind and get it over with. So I’ll get a place in Stroudsburg. I’ll get a gun, just so I’m safe. I’ll make sure Stewart knows where my new place is. And if he comes up there, trying to trespass, trying to force his way in … then I’ll know.”

Marissa stared at Jean, scrunching up her eyebrows, not certain she’d followed all that. “Then you’ll know … what?”

“What he’s got in mind.”

Still Marissa stared at her, trying to digest it. “What do you mean, you’ll make sure Stewart knows where your new place is? Wouldn’t you rather he didn’t know?”

“He’ll know where it is. And then, if he comes, I’ll know what his intentions are. And I’ll be able to handle it.”

There was a fairly long silence between them. Sounding a little more sober, Marissa said, “That sounds almost like you’re setting him up.”

Jean’s eyes leapt up to meet hers, sharp, angry, and shocked. “I don’t see how that makes sense.” Immediately, an embarrassed cloud muddled her face, as if she’d replayed her own words to herself and wondered if she’d inadvertently exposed something, or discovered something.

Marissa felt more confused and uncomfortable than she had in a long while. It didn’t help that objects were starting to slip out of their proper places in her field of vision. Seconds ago she’d been toying with the idea of ordering yet another margarita, but now she was glad her glass was empty and she would be able to leave soon. Still, she felt like she had to say, “That’s just kind of what it sounded like.”

“I’m just moving to someplace where I’m allowed to defend myself. You’re the one who’s been talking about how worried I should be.” She paused, waiting for Marissa to agree with her. When she wouldn’t, Jean signaled the waitress for the bill. “I need to get home,” she said.

They managed to maintain their balance on the way out. The light was the sharp blue of early evening, punctuated by LED screens splashing advertisements and by the colors of the cars and people. Marissa said, “Do you want to split a cab?”

“We talked about this. I live in Queens, you live in Brooklyn.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Marissa’s nauseating sense of being unmoored and adrift, which she’d thought was ebbing, surged back stronger than ever. She resolved to keep her mouth shut until her head cleared and she had a chance to think about what was going on.

Stewart, too, would call his friend from home. Her name was Maggie and they’d dated in high school and part of his first year of college; after breaking up they’d remained best friends. She’d only met Kevin a few times, because by the time she and Stewart started hanging out Kevin was already in college.

Maggie was sympathetic towards Stewart, but exasperated with him, and worried. She was afraid he was liable to get himself arrested somehow.

“I keep telling you,” she said to him over the phone, not unkindly but firmly, “there’s a reason they didn’t press charges against her.”

“I understand that. I understand all the legal stuff. But I know he was never planning to do anything bad to her.”

“Sure,” said Maggie, with fraying indulgence. Stewart had explained to her many, many times his theory about how Kevin had only been acting out. In the past few months it had seemed to obsess him more and more—instead of fading with the years, his grief and rage had suddenly surged back. “I believe you’re probably right about what was going through Kevin’s mind. But even if you are right, you can’t prove in court what was in his head.”

“I know that. But she was there. She knew better.”

“You can’t prove what was in her head, either.” The first hundred times she’d said this over the years, she’d been less blunt about it.

Instead of replying Stewart chewed his lips. He was certain that his brother had been goofing around and Jean had overreacted.

The silence stretched on. Finally Maggie said, with a tired helplessness, “So how’s the rest of your life? Are you enjoying New York at all?”

Begrudgingly, he told her about some of the cool stuff he’d been doing. For example, he’d discovered you could go to the opera for fifteen bucks, if you sat in the back row. The fucking opera! His horizons were being expanded, but they would have expanded more if he didn’t always have the Jean thing tugging at his mind.

He couldn’t help but talk about it again. “I just want people to know that Kevin wasn’t going to do anything bad. If she’d just talked to him and told him to quit, instead of fucking shooting him.”

“I think she did tell him to quit, Stewart.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure she said it like, ‘Stop it, you dumb monster,’ which would only egg him on. If she’d talked to him like a fellow human, things would have been different.”

There was another long silence. He started to worry. Sure enough, when Maggie did speak again, she said, “I love you, Stewart, but do you ever hear yourself anymore?”

It was true, Stewart privately conceded, he might be a little crazy. He said, “She was just a little trigger-happy. It’s not entirely her fault. I understand that she was scared. But she was just a little trigger-happy. I just want people to realize that. Or, if even just she realized it, that would be enough.”

“All right, Stewart,” said Maggie, a little loudly, her patience momentarily depleted. “I hate to say this, but if you pretend you’re going to rape someone, you kind of can’t complain if she believes you and reacts accordingly.” Stewart hung up on her.

The next day at work was one of his sullen, distant days. His coworkers had grown accustomed to these. Charles didn’t try to reach out to him, the way he still would have a week ago. For one thing, he was bonding steadily with the other workers, and so had less need of Stewart—though he remained interested in the guy’s saga, and was always toying with ideas on how to draw him out about it.

Charles was standing under the Information sign and Peter was at the register beside him, when Stewart walked up holding his hand on his belly. “Hey, Peter,” he said, ignoring Charles, making a pitiful face, “I’m not feeling so good, I think maybe I ought to go home.”

Without looking at Stewart, Peter smiled faintly and shook his head. In a gentle voice he said, “I don’t know, man. You haven’t been working here long and you’ve already gone home sick twice.”

Stewart blushed. “But I’m sick,” he said.

“You can do what you need to do, man. All I’m saying is, I don’t know what Daniel will do if he hears you’ve gone home for the third time while you’re still in your first month.”

Stewart stared at him, red-faced and at a loss, hand forgotten on his belly. Charles was embarrassed too, for Stewart’s sake, and kept his eyes forward. After a few seconds Stewart slunk off, and didn’t mention being sick again. On this day he and Charles were on the same shift, but when their workday was over Charles shot the shit a while with his co-workers, whereas Stewart took off.

Finally, Charles left the store. As if his brain was keyed to track her, he immediately noticed Marissa crossing the street from Bryant Park. He was trying to decide the best way to attract her attention, when to his delight he realized she was already waving at him. He waved back and waited with a smile for her at the crosswalk.