Speaking of the bookstore, I have to call and see if it’ll be cool for me to come in tomorrow. The way Ed made it sound, he wants me to take the next couple of days off, unwind, do whatever I need to do to get my head straight. I swore to them that the tires weren’t there on the bike when I came out of the building, but it’s pretty hard to claim one thing when the truth is standing right there in front of you on two wheels. So I’m not fired per se, just on leave. It sucks, because I like the company, but if push comes to shove, I can always get hired by another company … though if word gets around what happened-like how I lost a package which cost my company a big client-then maybe my chances of getting hired elsewhere aren’t as easy as I think they’ll be.
From the living room, the gunfire and explosions start up again. I head for Duncan’s room, check his closet to see how many black shirts are on the hangers, then check the dirty clothes splayed out around the floor. I grab two black shirts and take them down the hall to the washer. I throw in the shirts and some other stuff-jeans, socks, my hoodie-add some Tide, crank the dial, and press start.
Then I head for my room, where I close the door, undress out of my work clothes, put on sweats and a T-shirt, grab my iPod and earbuds and a book I’m borrowing from the store-Clockers by Richard Price-and lay back on my bed.
Duncan has his routine, and so do I.
Hey, I never said my life was exciting.
ten
By the time Ashley made it to her apartment, it was nearly nine o’clock.
She’d stayed at her parents’ much longer than she had intended, but it was good to see them, to talk, to learn about everything going on in their lives-the charity banquets, the Broadway shows, the different boards her father still sat on-that it was a mild distraction from her own life. But then, the night wearing on, she headed back home, remembering everything that had happened at work, all the things that had been said and unsaid. Sitting on the hard plastic seat of the N train, the tin can vibrating and shaking like it was going to snap apart at any moment, she gave a surreptitious glance around at the few people nearby, then lifted the sleeve of her coat to check her arm. There was still a slight indentation from where she had bitten herself when she screamed.
She made a quick stop at Whole Foods-milk, yogurt, bread-and then continued on toward her apartment building. Through the lobby, up the elevator to the fourth floor, and then she was standing in front of her door, taking a deep breath, before pushing it open.
Rex met her immediately just like he did most evenings, the cat probably bored out of his mind all day, that any change to his routine was welcome. He rubbed himself against her legs, purring softly, and then followed her into the kitchenette where she put away the groceries. By that point she had abandoned her heels, stretching her toes as she opened and closed the fridge.
She opened the cabinet above the sink on impulse, eyed the bottles of wine, hesitated, closed the cabinet.
Good, that was a start.
Rex hopped up onto the counter, meowing to get her attention.
“Hungry?”
The cat meowed again.
She opened a can of Fancy Feast, spooned the gunk out into a bowl, thinking about those cat foot commercials where cats are served their food on nice china with a side of parsley. Did people actually do that? Ashley figured some must. She loved her cat very much-she had gotten Rex when he was just a kitten four years ago-but there was only so much she was willing to do, and she wasn’t about to let Rex eat off better dishware than her.
She left Rex to his unfancy meal and padded into the bedroom. She undressed, laying the clothes she wore out on the unmade bed, opened up one drawer after another, not sure what to put on. Sweats, maybe? That made her think about the gym, and how she hadn’t gone in over a week, which then made her think about the one cute guy she always saw there, the one who spent twenty minutes on the elliptical before doing weights and who, as far as Ashley could tell, wasn’t married and wasn’t gay, which then, oddly, made her think about the undercover cop escorting Melissa this afternoon, which then brought her all the way back to her conversation with Jeff, which then, inevitably, reminded her about her meeting with Eric and Tom.
Rex looked up at her, his dry tongue licking his lips, when she came back into the kitchen.
“Don’t mind me,” she told him, opening the cabinet above the sink and selecting one of the bottles at random. It turned out to be a red wine, Pinot noir, which was just as well, and she poured herself a small glass.
Rex watched her from his place on the floor.
“Don’t judge me.”
He licked his lips and went back to his gruel.
Ashley drained the glass-only a swallow or two, not much at all-then hesitated, regarding the bottle, telling herself that one glass was more than enough, that she was done, to cap the bottle and put it back with its friends and go into the living room to watch TV.
She almost did it, too-she was right on the cusp-when she thought one more glass wouldn’t hurt and poured herself another, this time a lot more than before, and walked past Rex into the living room. She turned on the TV, the first thing coming on E! a rerun of the Kardashian show. She grabbed her iPad off the coffee table, checked some of her personal email, went to take another sip of the wine when she realized that her second glass was empty.
She stared at the ghost of her lipstick on the rim, telling herself that she was done now, two was more than enough, just set the glass aside and keep watching TV. It was a good idea-a great idea-and she managed to go five, maybe ten minutes, before she found herself back in the kitchen.
Rex once again regarded her disapprovingly.
“What? You cough up hairballs.”
He seemingly shook his head and retreated into the bedroom.
She filled her third glass a bit higher than the first two, or maybe a bit less, it was difficult to say. She promised herself this was it, just this third glass and no more, and she congratulated herself with first one sip, then a second. Then, before she knew it, she had dug the prescription bottle out of her purse, her emergency Vicodin, and swallowed two tablets. Back on the couch then, E! still on the TV, she began thinking about Melissa.
If you considered the amount of contact numbers and email addresses in her phone, Ashley was a very popular woman. But if you went person by person, Ashley would be hard-pressed to name any of them as good, close friends. They were acquaintances more than anything else, almost all of them friends on a professional level. Sure, there would be quite a few numbers from guys she’d met at one time or another, either at a function or at the club, and who knows, maybe she had called them and maybe they had hooked up, or maybe she hadn’t even given them a second thought, but all of those were numbers that meant very little, just like the rest. The only number that mattered, she realized, was Melissa’s, her old college roommate, her best friend.
It had never made much sense how she and Melissa ended up friends. Their backgrounds were so different. Ashley, having been raised in an elite family, where she always got what she wanted. Melissa, who had been somewhat well off, but not nearly to the point that Ashley was. Not, Ashley would interject to anyone who asked, that she was spoiled. Yes, her parents had paid for her apartment, and yes, her parents had paid for her schooling, and yes, her dad had basically gotten Ashley her job at the Post, but she was good at what she did, she was smart, so she deserved it. Didn’t she?
But Melissa, well, Melissa had gone against all odds and ended up where she was. It was true, Ashley helped her out a few times in college when she needed it. Ashley still wasn’t sure why, but she had been drawn instantly to Melissa their first year of college, as if they were destined to be friends. From there they became best friends, then roommates, and now, all this time later, they were still good friends. She had to admit, sometimes she was jealous of Melissa, for earning her spot in life, for finding a great husband and raising two great kids. It was something Ashley wanted one day, though every day that passed, she kept thinking it would never happen.