Terror (6 page)

I signed my name to the UPS man's electronic signature board. When he shut the door, it hit me. It was from my uncle. That's when I started panting and sweating, wiping my brow, too frazzled to actually open the envelope. Like I needed a drink. Not that he would send some sort of mail bomb, but you never know. I read a book a few weekends back about the Unabomber, and I can't get rid of the image of flying nails piercing my midsection. I know that sounds macabre or like I'm losing my gourd, but it's what I'm thinking about. For now, until I'm blessed with some inexplicable gust of courage, Oliver's letter is just going to sit right there on my nightstand, reminding me of what's become of me.

GAIA LAY IN BED, HER HEAD PROPPED up by two pillows, reading
The Brothers Karamazov.
If there was one positive to having fear, it was that she was suddenly more interested in her studies. For the first time since grade school, she was worried about falling behind, especially because of all the homework she'd missed while in Russia. And beyond that, she loved to read, especially books like this one, which made her feel connected to her mother and the Russian heritage she knew so little about. She had just finished
Crime and Punishment
and had found Dostoyevsky's dark psychologizing and his “extraordinary man” theory endlessly fascinating. Jake had just read
Brothers K.,
as he called it, in his English class and had given Dostoyevsky high praise. It gave them something beyond the ordinary details of their lives to talk about. And she had to admit—there was something kind of sexy about sharing a book with him.

Gaia was about to turn the page when a couple of sentences captured her attention. “But it was not her beauty that tormented him; it was something else. It was precisely the inexplicable nature of this fear that now added to the fear itself.” She read it again. It was romantic in a way, but it made her sad. She could
almost imagine Ed as having felt that way about her at some point, but maybe that was just wishful thinking.

Gaia turned her thoughts to the emotion that had become her life's central theme—fear—and how she was experiencing it often, at any given moment. She worried about her grades and about her health and about Ed and about her dad. She worried about exposing herself emotionally and about being too emotionally cut off. She worried about dying. And she felt this particularly because of her mother's premature death.

She would just have to learn to cope with all that. This was what she had wanted—to suffer this constant tension with the rest of humanity. She would have to deal with her mom being gone, with her dad being constantly absent. Loneliness. She would have to deal with the fact that she liked Jake to an almost disturbing extent. What would Dostoyevsky have done? She got the sense that he would have told her to walk right into the fire.

Gaia turned the page and sniffed a healthy whiff of fresh-book smell. Thank God for distractions like this one, a book written about way back when in the Russian countryside yet somehow relatable to her twenty-first-century life. She had been reading now for almost three hours. Three hours. Gaia's eyelids popped open.

Jake.

She looked at her clock radio.
Oh my God!
Gaia slapped a bookmark on the page and threw the covers
off her lap.
What should I wear?
She had promised to be well dressed and civil.

Gaia ran over to her closet and started flipping hangers with her fingertips. Where were those nice black tuxedo pants? Of course. They'd been a gift from someone two Christmases ago, still lying in a box somewhere. She had only unpacked half her stuff.

On each side of her bed was a four-foot-wide pathway between the bed and the wall. Gaia pulled a chair—
the
chair, as it were—over to her closet. She climbed up on it and pulled down box after box, frantically searching through each one. “CDs, books, pictures… no!” Gaia said to herself. “Shoes, knickknacks… damn…” Jake would be calling any minute now. There was only one box left. “This better be it.”

She pulled the small box down and stepped off the chair. She grabbed a ballpoint pen off her bed and ripped through the tape with it. Yes. There they were. Gaia pulled out the pants, admiring the sleek texture of the synthetic stretchy material and the satiny tuxedo stripe down the side. They were definitely her most flattering pants, but she rarely got a chance to wear them. Gaia held them up by the waistline for inspection. No! They had a pronounced wrinkle right above the knee. She had assumed this synthetic material wouldn't wrinkle. She needed an iron. Did she even have one? She had a travel steamer somewhere—another gift—but she hadn't seen it in a while. Damn. Why hadn't she thought of this?

THE SYMPHONY OF MIXED CHATTER was punctuated by the tap of coffee mugs against saucers. Megan Stein brought her mug to her lips, using it as a smoke screen to steal glances at her friends' outfits.
Why can't Laura get over those dowdy collared shirts? Tammie looks like she's lost weight.
The girls were stationed at their new favorite spot at their favorite coffee shop, Grey Dog Coffee, in the West Village. They always took the tables closest to the open-air window and the front door for maximum people-watching potential.

“Ohmigod,” Megan said. “Ohmigod.”

“What?”

“That guy—see that guy coming in right now…? Don't all look at once.”

Megan took a sip, her beady eyes peering over the lip of the mug. He looked good. He was one of those light-eyed, brown-skinned types who pulled off an almost Grecian demigod look with his caesar cut. She had seen him on a Crest toothpaste ad a few weeks back, baring his perfect teeth, but she had to admit he looked better in person. Megan watched as her friends one by one took turns getting a glimpse of the guy and his obscenely gorgeous Latino companion. Strolling toward
the counter, they had captured the attention of the entire café.

“Damn,” Tammie said. “He's hot.”

“Phase-two hot,” Melanie added.

“I'm aware of this,” Megan said. “See, his parents have a house on the Cape near ours. Two summers ago I picked him out as my summer project.”

“And?”

“And the project was a success. In the sense that we hooked up, which was all I wanted once I realized he was a freakin' dimwit.”

“He's dumb?” Laura asked.

“Totally,” Megan said.

“So…,” Melanie prodded. “Was he a good hookup?”

“The worst.” Megan put her mug in its saucer and leaned forward, putting herself in the epicenter of her own gossip whirlwind. “He was a tongue jammer.”

“A what?” Tammie asked.

“You know those guys who think that a hot kiss is when they ram their tongue in your mouth and dart all over your teeth and tonsils like an earthworm on crack? That was him. Total tongue jammer.”

Melanie snorted out a bolt of laughter. “That's so funny,” she said.

No one added anything to that, so the tongue-jammer conversation drifted away. Tammie stirred her coffee. Melanie and Laura both took sips. Megan, determined to direct the conversation toward a particular agenda she'd
wanted to work out, asked, “So did anyone else think Gaia acted weird today?”

“I felt like she was totally kissing our asses,” Laura answered.

“I agree,” Melanie said. “It's like, instead of that haughty scowl she usually gives us, she was trying to cover it up with a smile. And Gaia's not that good at faking anything.”

“Oh, come on.” Megan raised her mug of cappuccino, drank from it, and licked the foam from her lips. “I think that's being a little harsh.”

“What,” Melanie said. “You didn't think she was putting on an act?”

“I don't know,” Megan said. “But I mean, when she acts normal, you say she's a bitch, and when she's nice, you say she's acting.”

Melanie sniffed. “Since when did you become the poster girl for fair treatment?”

“Whatever.” Megan flipped her hair and let the dismissive magic of that word kick in. “The most important thing is—and I have no idea how she does this, considering she dresses like a nobody most of the time—but Gaia gets great guys. Ed. Sam. Jake. I mean, if there's one good reason to have her in our group, it's her famous Gaia guy-getting ability.”

“I'll give her that,” Tammie agreed.

“I have to admit, I think Jake is white-hot,” Melanie said. “I can't believe she scored him.”

“Did you see the way he got all googly and affectionate around her?” Laura rolled her eyes. “How he whispered something to her and suddenly they had to go? It was so couple-ish and cute, I almost wanted to yack.”

“So we're in agreement, then,” Megan said, “that Gaia has gained trial membership in our group on the grounds of her guy-getting ability?”

Tammie pursed her lips and shrugged. Laura was nodding. The only dissenter seemed to be Melanie, who had crossed her arms over her chest and was looking at the ceiling.

“Then we're agreed,” Megan said. She lifted her mug. The other three girls robotically followed her lead. They clinked mugs, then took sips in near-perfect synchronicity.

GAIA CLOSED HER EYES AND LET streams of hot water rinse the suds from her face. She pulled back and started lathering Dove soap on her skin in quick, panicky motions from shoulders to forearms to thighs and on down her legs. She hated not having the time to enjoy a shower. Besides sleep, showers were one
of the few activities that didn't incite fear. Gaia lifted up her arm and craned her neck to look at her underarm. Great. She hadn't shaved in at least a week, and a patch of prickly hairs had sprouted up. How sexy. But she didn't have time to shave. She could wear something that would cover it up, sure, but she wouldn't be able to stop thinking about those patches under her arms. It would be hard to feel attractive knowing she was an Amazon woman underneath.

Gaia sprayed shaving gel under each pit and shaved, taking care to cover each contour. When she finished, she ran her fingertips across her leg. Being prickly was somehow more disgusting than if she had the grown-out short-and-curlies. Even a European woman couldn't get away with this.

She propped her foot against the side of the tub and started working pink gel into a lather on her legs. She squirted it out in long streaming lines that mirrored the contours of her muscles. Then she massaged in the gel, both hands working at once on their respective legs.
Way too much.
As much as she rubbed, she couldn't get rid of those menacing pink globs of gel.

Gaia grabbed her razor and started mowing long lines up the side of her calf. Shaving was kind of fun, like painting in reverse. The phone rang. Gaia bolted upright and stood erect, like a deer at the snap of a twig.

“Owww!” A red nick appeared on her knee. Gaia
looked at it and made a hissing sound.

The phone rang again. Gaia threw open the shower curtain. The portable phone was right there, balanced on the corner of the sink. She couldn't quite reach it, so she took a step outside the tub. A dollop of whipped shaving gel landed on the bath mat. Gaia grabbed the phone with her soaked, prunelike fingertips. She pressed talk.

“Hello.”

“Hey, Gaia. It's Jake. I'm on my cell phone, walking toward you. I'm like three blocks away. Should I just ring your bell?”

“Uh… no,” Gaia said. Her wet ear squeaked against the earpiece. “I'm sorry, I'm not ready, and Suko won't let you in.”

“Um. Okay.”

“Listen, I'll meet you there,” Gaia said. “I'm just getting out of the shower, but I've got my outfit picked out and everything. …”
Did I just say that?
Gaia thought.
Who
am
I?
“Just give me the address and I'll meet you there in a bit.”

“You sure you don't want me to just walk around for a while and come back?”

Gaia gritted her teeth and breathed deep. She had known Jake would do the gentlemanly thing. But she really didn't want the pressure of him waiting around for her. “No, I'd really rather meet you there.”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Hey, Jake?” Gaia said. “How nice is this place we're going to? Is it like all chichi?”

“I don't know. The Zagat review says the ‘seviche is delectable.'” Jake chuckled. “Sounds like it's some overpriced, needlessly hip joint with good food and waitresses that want to be actresses.”

“Interesting,” Gaia said. She mentally cataloged her wardrobe for a hip shirt.
Nada.
“All right. So what's the address?”

“It's on the corner of Barrow and Seventh Ave.,” Jake said.

“All right,” Gaia said. “Well, see you there in fifteen.”

“Bye.”

Gaia hung up.
Fifteen minutes? Who am I kidding?
She wasn't even halfway through picking out an outfit. The tuxedo pants would do, but she couldn't think of a shirt to go with them that qualified as hip or even vaguely wannabe-actress. This shaving project would have to be shelved.

Gaia rinsed off and grabbed her towel off the hook. She jogged out of the bathroom and down the hall, dabbing herself dry as she went. Knowing that the door wasn't locked, she picked up speed with the intention of bolting right through it into her room. The plan backfired. Overwhelmed by the dual task of drying herself and running, she didn't plant her back foot, slipped on the tile, and bashed her big toenail into the bottom edge of the door.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Gaia yelled.

She bent down and pulled her foot to her chest. Her toenail was purple.
Am I subconsciously trying to kill myself? Did the gene therapy strip me of my coordination?

JAKE LOOKED AT HIS CELL PHONE and shook his head. Twenty-four minutes late and counting. If Gaia had just let him walk around the block and come back, he would be arm in arm with her right now, walking casually toward their dinner date. But instead, this: sitting outside a hip restaurant, pacing back and forth, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket every two minutes to check the time or see if he'd miraculously missed a call.