“From college girls to New York City cougars. I’ll choose to take the development as a sign of maturity. No work tonight?”
“I called in sick.”
“I would think your germs would blend in just fine at the Booby Barn.” With his current job at a strip bar, her brother had beaten his longest record of employment four-fold. The so-called gentlemen’s club on the West Side Highway was named Vibrations, but she and Jess preferred to conjure up their own pseudonyms.
“You planning to see Captain America?” he asked. “I can scram if you need me out of here.”
Jess had been referring to ADA Max Donovan as Captain America since she and Max had first met. She was convinced that they could marry and celebrate their fiftieth anniversary and Jess would still be calling him Captain America.
“He got called out to Rikers.”
“Want something to eat?”
The invitation usually led to Jess choosing the take-out place, Ellie paying, and Jess eating most of what arrived.
“I’m not hungry yet. You want me to get you something? Chicken soup?”
“No, I’ll call the deli when I’m ready.”
“I had a callout today to Bill Whitmire’s house.”
“Are you kidding me? The Bill Whitmire?”
“His house has an elevator.”
“He’s Bill Whitmire. His house should have an elevator, a water slide, and strippers in every room. Please tell me you slipped him a demo of Dog Park.” No matter where—or whether—he earned a paycheck, Jess’s true calling was as lead singer and guitarist for his band, Dog Park. Ten years ago, Ellie had moved to the city when she sensed that Jess’s phone calls home to Wichita—filled with allusions to always-imminent but never-actual “big breaks”—were a cover for serious trouble. What she found instead was that Jess had managed to carve out something of a life for himself, albeit not the one he described to their mother. Since then, she’d done the same.
“Right. Because I carry your demos around with me. Not to mention that his daughter killed herself last night.” She gave him a brief run-down of her day. “The girl’s mother couldn’t handle it. Says the girl would never do something like that. She kept begging me to believe her.”
“You all right?”
She was losing track of the number of people who’d asked her that today. “Yeah. Fine. You didn’t come home last night.” Yesterday seemed like such a long time ago. “You stayed over at that bartender’s place?”
“Rebecca. Bartender slash actress slash singer slash superfine hottie.”
Just like Jess was a titty-bar bouncer slash rock god, the people he knew usually had multiple professions. Most recently, he had been spending multiple overnights per week with a victim on one of Ellie’s cases from last fall. That particular woman was an artist slash prostitute, but she’d vowed to get out of the life after it almost got her killed. Ellie had only just gotten past her worries about the relationship when it finally ran its course, as relationships with Jess always seemed to do.
She tried joining him in front of the television, but watching the real housewives fight over who drank more pinot grigio made her want to arrest somebody.
“I love you, Jess, but I can’t do it. It’s like I feel brain cells seeping away with each passing minute. I’m heading to the gym.”
“Keep it gangster.”
Ellie remembered everything about the first time she got punched in the head. She screamed, not from the pain, but from the complete surprise of the impact itself. It was only as she screamed from the shock that the actual, physical pain registered. The piercing stab right behind her temple that seemed like it had to have cracked her open from ear to ear. The throbbing that radiated across her skull, down her jawbone into her neck. The blurring of her vision. The sincere belief that her brain was rattling behind her sockets like candy in a thumped piñata.
The punch had been delivered by a sixteen-year-old kid she caught tagging a phone booth in Hell’s Kitchen. Stuck on graveyard with ten minutes to go before shift change, she had planned on confiscating the spray can and letting him off with a warning. The skinny kid with long bangs and the moniker 2SHY didn’t know that, though, and caught her off guard with a right hook. What she remembered most about that first punch was her anger—not about the punch, but about the tears. She had blinked over and over again, trying to focus her vision, trying to stop the pain, but mostly trying to stop those stupid fucking tears from falling down her face in front of the shitty little kid who’d gotten a jump on her.
She was so humiliated about getting knocked by a hundred-pound teenager that she processed the criminal mischief charge but let him slide on the assault of a police officer. It was only her third month on the job. She was still getting past the beauty-queen jokes. She didn’t need the house to know she’d cried from a sucker punch.
It was the first time Ellie had been punched, but she’d known it wouldn’t be the last. She also knew she’d need to get better at it.
Now she was a kickboxer at the total-contact level, allowed to apply full power, force, and strength against an opponent in a ring. Instead of tears, she felt beads of sweat pour down her face as she threw jab after jab against the heavy black practice bag.
The intensity of her one-sided fight was telling her something about her own energy. She was grinding it out the way she could usually muster only inside the ring against a live opponent. Something was eating at her.
As she chopped her lower shin against the side of the bag, she found herself thinking about Julia. And not the appearance of her thin, naked body in the pink bathwater, but her words on the lined yellow pages. Every word. Every sentence. The hesitation marks and cross-outs. Without realizing she’d done so, Ellie had committed the entire note to memory.
She could picture the girl in life, sitting cross-legged on her low platform bed, staring at the legal pad, three-quarters of a page already filled with blotchy black ink, crossing out yet another word. Unsatisfied with that single deletion, she would have stabbed the pen across the last four lines of text, running the ballpoint tip across the page so many times she actually managed to poke a hole in the paper.
I know I should love my life, but sometimes I hate it. My parents tell me all the time how lucky I am. Lucky to have good schools, a nice house. Money. Them. Yes, they actually said that. I was lucky to have them.
Julia had crossed out everything after the word money. Maybe she didn’t feel like writing about her parents. Maybe she realized they were the kind of people who never should have had children, but that the observation was better kept to herself.
Ellie followed the jab series with alternating hooks and uppercuts, then started to throw in front and roundhouse kicks, the appearance of Julia’s words still fresh in her visual cortex.
I understand why other kids would assume my life is easy. No one wants to hear a spoiled rich girl complain. I know some kids who would kill (maybe in some cases literally)
She had scratched out the parenthetical. It had probably been an attempt at humor, but she’d concluded correctly that it just didn’t belong there. She had tried to block the words out completely, but Ellie had been able to piece them together beneath the scratches.
I know some kids who would kill to have the “privileges” I know I have. But sometimes I wonder if maybe their lives aren’t actually better. Or at least more free. No one expects anything from a kid who has nothing.
I’m constantly being told how lucky I am, but the truth is, my so-called privileged life