LITMIR.BIZ

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I also happened to notice the no-man’s-land under the bed, which was crowded with boxes. These turned out to be really hard to get to, because they all were just a little bit too big for the space which meant they were really squashed in there. They also each weighed a ton, as I discovered, since they were full of used paperbacks, most of them mysteries. After about twenty minutes of dragging those boxes out of there I was ready to completely give up, until I got to the very last box, which was up by the headboard on the far side of the bed. That one was not full of books. It was full of junk, a crummy handbag, a little red change purse, two pairs of reading glasses, and an old cedar jewelry box filled with fake pearls and junky necklaces, another quart-sized bottle of vodka, nearly empty, and a tiny bottle of French perfume.

      It looked just the way I remembered it, pitch black, and shaped like a heart. The ghost of the word Joy ran across one side, in elegant gold letters. And then of course, as much as I wanted it, it suddenly just seemed unbearably awful to me. That perfume started with her at the beginning of her past, when she thought that lots of glamorous things were in store for her. I know that’s why she was so careful with it; she was waiting for her life to be as exciting as that bottle of perfume, and the closest she ever got was a couple of cocktail parties with my father, who hardly ever had a job, and whose temper was the bane of her existence. I tipped the bottle to one side, trying to figure out how much perfume was still in there, after thirty-seven years. It was impossible to say.

      It was not, of course, until this very moment that it occurred to me that I had left a pan full of water boiling this whole time on the stove top. Which I have done several times in the past, in different apartments, to more or less disastrous results, so I jolted myself out of this mournful and useless reverie and ran back to that lousy kitchenette, where I put more water on to boil, then made another cocktail, cooked up some noodles, had another drink, watched the end of a documentary about Egypt, and had a good cry. Then I thought about just passing out on that couch in front of the television set, which seemed like a really poor idea, because that is the sort of thing that leads one to think one might actually be an alcoholic like one’s mother which was a thought I didn’t particularly want to entertain that night. So then I stood up, definitely wobbly, but didn’t judge myself because Mom was dead and I was feeling hideous, and then I thought about climbing into her bed, and that was just not an option, so then I wandered back through that maze of rooms until I found the one with the stars and planets on the ceiling and the little beds on the floor, and one of those beds was made up with a couple of pillows and a kind of a kid’s coverlet that was dark blue with rocket ships all over it. And then I slid off my jeans and got under that cover and I cried a little more, and then I went to sleep.

      “Who the fuck are you?”

      That’s the next thing I remember. Two guys standing in the doorway, staring at me. One of them had flipped on the overhead light, so I could see there were two of them, two fucking huge guys, staring at me sleeping in that little bed on the floor of that little room.

      “What?” I said, blinking. “What?”

      “Answer the fucking question. Who the fuck are you, and what the fuck are you doing here?” The first guy, the one standing inside the room with his hand on the light switch, was drunk. You could tell that right away.

      “What time is it?” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. And I really wanted to know what time it was. I was completely confused.

      “Who gives a fuck what time it is? Who the fuck are you?” the first guy said again.

      “Shit,” I said. Which, it may not have been the brightest thing to say? But this guy was scaring me.

      “Answer the fucking question. And get out of that bed. Get up. Get up!” Now he was barking orders and it was totally freaking me out. I was still blinking and trying to wake up and figure out what time it was and how much of a hangover I had, and this huge guy was reaching over to grab me. Honestly, I remember thinking, what a fucking drag. I’m in a total mess again and this time it isn’t even my fault; me staying here was Lucy’s dumb idea, I was just doing what Lucy wanted, and here I am now in a total fucking mess. I squeezed myself back against the wall, ducked my head down and threw my arm across my face because it was taking me so long to wake up and I was scared. Oh what a drag, I thought, what a complete hideous drag.

      “Stop it, Pete. You’re scaring her,” said the other guy.

      “Good. I want to scare her. Breaking and entering is a fucking crime, she should be scared,” said Pete, still coming at me, like he was going to drag me out of that bed.

      “I didn’t break and enter, excuse me, excuse me but do you think I could put my pants on?” I yelled. “Get away from me, JESUS BACK OFF YOU JERK.” I smacked Pete’s hand away before he could touch me, and surprisingly he actually did back off. Feeling suddenly cocky I continued yelling. “Turn around, would you please TURN AROUND?”

      Okay, why this worked I have no idea, but it did; both of these guys did as they were told. I mean I was freaked out because seriously these were two huge guys, both of them maybe six two or six four and I’m a little bit of a peewee so I totally did not expect them to do as I said. But they did so I grabbed my jeans off the floor and slid them on fast. Being half naked was not going to be an advantage in whatever this situation turned out to be, that much was certain.

      “Who the fuck are you guys?” I said, trying to sound angry and sure of myself. I was totally scared out of my mind so I had to keep the upper hand as long as I could.

      “We’re the ones asking questions here,” Pete started. “I hope you’re dressed because that’s as much privacy as you’re going to get.” He turned around just as I finished zipping up my pants, and when I looked up I noticed that he was taking a hit off a beer bottle. No question: they both were tanked. This was a very bad situation. “So what’s your name?” he demanded.

      “I don’t have to tell you my name. You tell me your name,” I said.

      “You’re sleeping in my fucking bed, so yeah, you do have to tell me your name,” Pete countered.

      “Forget it. Let’s just call the police,” said the other guy.

      “I am the police,” Pete told him, annoyed. “You can’t call the police when the police are already here.”

      “Well, who cares who she is?” asked the other guy. “Just get her out of here.” He looked back toward the back of the apartment, like he knew what was back there and it made him sad. Pete looked like he wanted to argue about this, but then all of a sudden he was too tired to do it, so he looked back at me and reached out again, like he was going to grab me. I backed up. He didn’t get mad this time, though, he just moved his hand, like that little gesture that means, Come on, let’s go.

      And that’s what he said. “Come on, let’s go. I don’t know how you got here and I don’t care. Count yourself lucky. Just get lost.” He wasn’t even looking at me by now, he was half following the other guy, who had already headed down the hall. He took a hit off his beer, looking totally wiped and also like all he really cared about was finishing the one beer and finding another. Now that he wasn’t screaming at me I could see that he was not bad looking; he needed a shave, and he was a little paunchy around the middle, but he had great eyes, dark brown, kind of shrewd and sad, which made his whole face look like a worried kid, even while he was being mean. Under the circumstances obviously I wasn’t falling for it, plus, I truly didn’t get what was supposedly going on here. These guys had barged in and woken me up maybe a minute ago. And now what, I was supposed to leave? Who the fuck did they think they were? I mean obviously I was grateful in the moment that they didn’t turn out to be rapists, but after the initial terror some sense of reality was setting in. What the hell?

      “I’m not going anywhere,” I told Pete. “This is my apartment. I live here. And and and I think it’s a good idea to call the cops because you’re the ones who what the fuck are you doing here? Who the fuck are you?”

      “You live here?” he said. “You live here?”

      “Yes,” I said. “This

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