“I want you to smoke with me,” he said. I snorted like it was a joke, but he looked me square in the eyes. “I don’t want you doing it for the first time with some randos.”
I watched how the light flickered off his face as he took the first hit. I tried to match his stoicism, the length of his inhale, the way his finger flickered over the carb. My throat screamed, but I didn’t dare cough.
When the bowl was cashed, Jack put a mixed CD in his Discman and leaned close to share his headphones. His bloodshot eyes half-closed. He tongued his lip piercing, wheeling that little metal hoop around and around. I wanted to be closer to him. I wanted, I thought with a flash that scared me, to lick the curve of skin just above the chain he wore around his neck.
A song came on and Jack pulled the jewel case from under his bed. The track names were handwritten in Sharpie. The one we were listening to was called “Sister Jack.”
“It’s you,” he said with a stoner’s laugh. He patted my knee and the inside of my leg went electric.
I grip the banister of Patrick Bloom’s patio until the worn wood starts to splinter. I blow a cloud of smoke and imagine it conjuring Jack. Why do I still think of him as part of my life? He’s nothing more than a shadow.
The weed has hit me and I’m starving. I go back to the garden and snap off a head of corn. A grub pokes out from the folds of husk. I pluck it out and stomp it underfoot. Inside, I sauté the corn in a thick pat of butter.
I’ve smoked enough to tranquilize a horse, but the second my head touches Patrick Bloom’s pillow, I find that, once again, I cannot sleep.
If I move around, maybe my exhaustion will catch up with me.
I put on my sneakers and leave the house for a walk through the neighborhood. My heart races faster as I make my way up and down the lurching hills. The dark-windowed houses loom overhead and the quiet is punctuated by bursts of sound. A dog barking as I pass, a motorcycle backfiring somewhere high on the twisted roads. I wonder what I’d look like to someone watching from inside one of these beautiful houses. A hoodlum from the flatlands, no doubt.
I turn onto a road where the sidewalk narrows to a sliver. I hear an engine rumble and then a car careens around a blind curve, flying toward me so quickly that I think I’m going to die. The car jerks to swerve around me, the side-view mirror close enough that I could reach out and touch it. I forget to breathe until the streak of rear lights disappears into the night.
It’s my last day. I need to keep it together.
I try working on a hard-copy editing test in the garden under the slanted shade of the house, but my brain is out to sea. Flies dive-bomb the caverns of my ears. I swat them away and one of them tumbles into the mug of expensive coffee I made in Patrick Bloom’s kitchen. I could fish it out but, instead, I watch it struggle at the surface until its last twitch.
I need to go inside, it’s too hot. Might as well grab something to eat first.
I think of Eloise as I go to the carrot bed and try gently tugging on one of the tops. The ground looks soft, but the carrot doesn’t budge. I reach my hand into the dirt and feel around for something firm. When I do, I grab it. As I pull my hand up, the soil spews worms with translucent skin. I can see the blackness of their guts.
I yank my hand away. It’s crawling with bugs. I drop the carrot, leap back, and beat the insects from my arm. Ants are trapped in the beads of my sweat, their little legs flailing. One fat-bodied ant digs its mouth into the not-yet-healed cut on my index finger, its mandible pinching into my raw flesh so firmly that its whole body stands on end. I squash it with my thumb.
The carrot I picked is short and fat. It looks too pale. I’ve lost my appetite for it anyhow. I shove it back in the ground, even though I’m sure I’ve killed it.
I go inside and shower in water so hot that I leave more sweaty than clean.
I’m walking upstairs when I see the study. I think of finding a charger. Using my laptop would help pass the time. I could get work done. Or just bum around on Facebook.
The study is locked, though that doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t get in.
I shouldn’t go in.
I want to, though. I really, really want to. It is, in fact, the only thing that I want to do. My laptop is part of it but, to be honest, I mostly want to know what it’s like in there.
Isn’t that a perk of house-sitting? Peeking into someone’s life?
I run my hands over the smooth wood and examine the lock. Easy. I pull a bobby pin from my hair and wedge it into the keyhole. A trick Jack showed me when we were kids. I wriggle it around until I feel a click, a give, and the lock comes undone.
Sun streams through the windows, illuminating two tall file cabinets. A towering desktop computer sits alongside a bundle of extra laptop chargers. I set my computer on the desk and plug it in.
It’ll take awhile to reboot. I figure it’s okay to look around in the meantime.
Stacks of books border his desk, which is littered with pens. I come upon a pile of papers. Printouts from Eloise. There’s a sticky note on top. Hope this helps, it reads. It’s meant for Patrick Bloom but it feels like it’s for me — if there’s a chance I’ll become this guy’s assistant next year, I should see what I’d actually have to do.
It looks like original writing, not articles or studies. Printed in Times New Roman, twelve-point font with a smattering of grammatical errors.
Something like an essay.
It’s... an assignment? A class assignment?
It’s a chapter.
That can’t be right. Patrick Bloom would never have a grad student write something for him. I must be mistaken. I open a file cabinet. There are entire drawers dedicated to different books. First, Man Eat Food. A bunch of papers have headers that say, Winnie Ford. I pull out my phone and look her up on LinkedIn. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, class of 2002. Currently a senior editor for the lifestyle magazine that did the shoot of Patrick Bloom’s home.
I look through Microgreen.
Gardening in Eden.
Truth, Lies, and Celery.
WalkFit.
All of them have traces of the assistants who ghostwrote them. Cover pages with their names. Hand-scrawled marginalia. Last-minute swipes of Wite-Out.
I brace myself and then look through the one for Mother, Wife, Mine, Gone. It takes me an hour of searching through every paper in that pile, but I find it. My favorite line rendered in a student’s handwriting: She took her last breath, jagged and true. She was there. And then she was gone.
He even had them write the book about his dead wife.
I manage to put the papers back in the files, the files in the cabinet, and I lock the door from the inside on my way out.
I need to go to sleep. Now. That is the only way I’ll get through my last evening in this house. I head downstairs to hunt for something that will seriously fuck me up. I haul myself onto the kitchen counter and search through the highest shelf to find what I’m looking for. A bottle of gin. I take it down, fill a cup, and top off the bottle with tap water.
I plunk a handful of ice cubes into my glass and drink it like it’s medicine. I’m out of weed, but this guy has to have something fun. I rifle through the bathroom. Ibuprofen, acid reflux meds, a box of Tums. Aha, there it is. A prescription bottle with the label torn off. The pills inside are white and round. They look like Ativan, though I’m not totally sure. Fuck it, let’s find out. I down two with a gulp of gin.