Torch: A Novel Part 23

"I wouldn't say the whole town," he said as evenly as he could. He squeezed her thigh. Sometimes they argued about what he did and why. They'd agreed that once the baby was born he would get what they called a "real job."

"I can think of, like, ten people right now who are totally becoming tweakers."

"Well, ten people isn't the whole town," he countered, though in truth he could think of dozens more. At times, he wished he'd never told Lisa about what he did for a living.

"What's Claire's middle name?" Lisa asked.

He had to think for a moment. "Rae. Why?"

"I'm thinking of names for the baby."

Rae was his mother's middle name too, he almost added. An image of her face came into his mind then, bony and stark and startled and lonely, the way it had been when he'd walked into her hospital room and seen her dead.

"What names do you like?" Lisa asked, turning to him, and then, abruptly, she turned all the way around, to see the lights of a police car blazing behind them.

Joshua saw it in the rearview mirror in the same instant and banged on the steering wheel.

"Do you have anything on you?" Lisa whispered as he slowed the truck.

"Quiet," he said.

"Josh!"

"I said shut the f.u.c.k up," he snapped. They stopped on the side of the road and waited for Greg Price to get out of his car and come to them.

"We meet again, Mr. Wood," Greg said a few moments later. The beam of his flashlight hit their faces through the open window, a dagger of light, slicing them in two.

14.

TWO NIGHTS AFTER Claire moved out, she drove past the apartment where she used to live with David. She'd left a candle there, propped in the window of what was once their bedroom, and as she pa.s.sed by she could see it sat there still, precisely as she'd left it, a beeswax taper in a bottle, unlit and unmoved.

Her new house was a dilapidated mansion that was owned by a punk rocker and trust-fund baby named Andre Tisdale. He'd inherited the house from his grandmother. All the houses on the street were the same as Andre's: grand old wrecked beauties that used to belong to the Minneapolis aristocracy back when the rich still wanted to live in this section of town. A few of the houses were in worse shape than Andre's, their windows and doors boarded up with warning signs plastered over them; a few were in better shape, painted in surprising period colors to show off the intricacies of their architecture. One was hardly even a house anymore at all, since it had caught fire a few months before, though its charred remains hulked like a ship caught on a sand bar, presiding over the street.

From the outside, Claire's room hung like an ear that had been attached to the third story of the house as an afterthought. Inside, it was cut off from the rest of the rooms that made up the third floor. Eons ago, it had been occupied by the maid, Andre had explained when he had shown her the place. To a series of maids, Claire thought at the time, but didn't correct him. Even to her, from the distance of time, they all seemed to be one person: maid after maid after maid. The floor was warped and there was no door on the closet, but the room had its own bathroom and its own stairway that snaked through the hidden interior of the house like a laundry chute, leading to all the places that the maid would most often have needed to go: to the kitchen and the bas.e.m.e.nt; to the back door, where the garbage bin was kept. The stairway served now as something of a secret pa.s.sageway and Claire was at a time in her life when a secret pa.s.sageway was what she believed she needed more than anything. A place private and anonymous that made it possible for her to live the transient, borderless, wild animal life she believed she had to live now that her mother was dead and David was no longer her boyfriend and Bruce made only feeble attempts at being her father. She still had Joshua, and to him she clung even though she seldom saw him.

He came to Minneapolis to help her move. He'd never been to see her in Minneapolis before and she prepared for his visit the way she would an honored guest, though he would be there only for the afternoon and only to haul boxes from an empty apartment to an empty room. She bought Mountain Dew and pretzel rods and a tin of chocolate-covered caramels to send home with him as a thank you.

"h.e.l.lo," she called when he pulled up and parked on the street. She'd been waiting for him on the porch. It was the middle of August and they hadn't seen each other since the Fourth of July, since before she bleached her hair the whitest possible shade of blond. As he approached, she watched the mild shock register on his face.

"What do you think?" she asked, reaching for her hair as he ascended the porch stairs.

"It kind of makes you look like a hooker," Joshua said.

She punched his arm and a look of indignation spread over her face.

"And the rest of the getup doesn't help." He gestured to what she was wearing: a little beige top and a tiny pair of cut-off jean shorts slung low and wooden thongs that had a fake daisy between each toe. She'd kept out a T-shirt and sneakers that she would change into once they started to load the truck.

"I think it looks good," she said archly.

"To go around in just a bra?" asked Joshua.

Claire glanced down at her chest. "It's not a bra, so f.u.c.k off. It's a shirt, for your information."

"Well, it looks like a bra to me."

"Well, it's not." She gave him a threatening look. "My G.o.d, Josh. It's almost a hundred degrees outside. Do you expect me to wear a turtleneck?"

"Are you on crack?" he asked suddenly, humorlessly. "Or meth or c.o.ke or something?"

"What's your problem today?" she asked, wounded. Their eyes met for the first time and she saw his expression shift as he realized he was wrong. She looked away. "I thought you'd be happy to see me."

"I am," he said, softening. "It's that you seem different. Kind of city."

Claire smiled and stretched her arms wide. "Here we are in the city, Josh. This is what people dress like here." She turned abruptly toward the house and tugged on his arm, guiding him inside. "Can we please stop talking about what I look like?"

She led him past the boxes she'd packed and stacked up in the living room and into the kitchen, where she gave him a cold Mountain Dew.

"So what do you think?" she asked, looking around at the bare counters and cupboards. "I mean, I wish you'd have seen it before I had it all packed up, but-"

"It's nice," said Joshua. He cracked his can of pop open and stood holding it uncertainly.

Before he arrived, Claire had walked through each room, attempting to see it all through Joshua's eyes, hoping he would think it was cool. She gestured toward his Mountain Dew. "I'd give you ice and a gla.s.s, but I already packed them up."

"That's okay." He took a long sip as she watched him and then he held it out to her. "You want some?"

"No thanks," she replied politely. In all of their lives they'd never met up intentionally or made plans with only each other. It felt strange and formal and grownup.

"So I suppose you're wondering what happened." Her voice echoed against the emptiness of the kitchen.

"With what?" he asked, and burped.

"With David." She leaned against the counter and then hoisted herself up to sit on it. "I never told you why we broke up."

"I thought you were just taking time apart," he said, without sympathy.

"No. It's over."

He nodded.

"But I'm coping." She took a deep breath. "Of course, I miss him sometimes, but I think it's probably for the best."

He nodded again.

"I was unfaithful," she blurted. She hadn't planned to tell him this, but now she offered it up, wanting to force him to respond. "I had this-" she folded her hands on her lap and then released them "-thing with a guy in Duluth."

Joshua kept his expression still and unreadable, as if he already knew everything she could possibly say, but then she saw his face flush pink. She wondered if he'd ever cheated on anyone and immediately decided he hadn't.

"He's older. He's, like, almost forty." She paused, to give Joshua time to react, but he didn't. He only took another swig of his Mountain Dew. "And-I mean-it's completely over now," she said, though in truth she'd gone up to see Bill in Duluth three times over the summer, sailing past the exit to Midden on her way. "He's not the reason that David and I broke up. Well, I suppose he's part of the reason ultimately. Let's put it this way: he didn't help the cause. But I don't know. It's a lot of things. It's complicated." She was talking fast, wired from having consumed so much coffee in the past few days as she'd packed her apartment, leaving too much to the last minute. "Anyway, I haven't seen him for a month-this guy, the old guy, Bill. It's not like we're in a relationship or anything."

She stopped talking and looked at Joshua, regretting having asked him to come, regretting having involved him in her Minneapolis life-the life she considered her real, private life. It wasn't until this instant, as he stood silently in her kitchen, that she realized she had concocted a fantasy of what it would be like to have her brother here. In it, he would talk and want to know everything; he would tell her things and make sounds of approval or curiosity as he listened. Instead, he was like always, secret and unattainable. Just as a part of her was to him, she thought now. Without their mother and Bruce to hold them together, they were not a family anymore, but siblings-a leaner, spa.r.s.er thing. Just Claire and Joshua: two people wandering in the wilderness, each of them holding one end of a string.

"So how are you and Lisa doing?" she asked, pushing off of the counter, stumbling off of one of her shoes as she landed.

He shrugged.

"You're getting rather serious, it seems."

"Why do you say that?" He set his empty can on the counter, and Claire picked it up and put it in the recycling bin by the back door.

"Because you've been together for a while."

"Not even six months."

"Okay, Josh. No reason to get defensive. I was only saying-"

"It'll be six months tomorrow," he said, as if he felt guilty about having downplayed it a moment ago.

"Are you going to celebrate?" Claire asked.

"We're going to Brainerd," he said, and opened the refrigerator. Inside there were two more cans of Mountain Dew and the box of caramels she was going to give him. He closed it and turned to her. "But I'm too young to settle down."

"No one said you were settling down," said Claire. She looked at him quizzically, as if just now she was seeing him. His arms were manlier than she'd remembered them, and tan; the hair that grew on them thicker, and golden.

"Lisa's great, but she's not the only woman in the world."

"Woman?" Claire said in a teasing, ecstatic voice. The possibility that her brother could be dating anyone that could be described as a woman seemed absurd to her.

"Shut up."

"Wo-man!" she warbled.

"Don't we have work to do?" he asked, and she followed him out of the kitchen and into the living room, where they stood looking at all of her things.

"I'm thinking we should load the bed first and then pack all the smaller stuff around it," he said.

She looked out the window at his truck. It was dustier, more worn than all the others parked on the street. She recognized the dust as Midden dust, the mud that rimmed the wheel wells, Midden mud. It wasn't just dust and mud, it was Bruce and it was her mother, it was Joshua and home. Seeing it made her feel happy and sad at once.

"You forgot something," Joshua hollered. He had wandered away into her old bedroom.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A candle."

"Oh that," Claire said, going to him. "That stays."

Joshua left as soon as his truck was unloaded, though Claire tried to convince him to spend the night. Once she was alone she paced the room, thinking about how she should arrange the few pieces of furniture she had. From the windows she could see both the front and back of the house, east and west, from street to alley, from hulking ship to garbage bin. She stopped pacing and stared out the window to the street, as if she were waiting for Joshua to return, watching for his truck, though she wasn't waiting. She only seemed to be.

"Boo," Andre whispered, standing in the doorway.

She turned to him, startled. He had a smile on his face that made her feel that he'd been watching her for some time.

"Hey."

"So now that you're in, do you want the grand tour?"

She followed him down the stairs and through the kitchen and living room and up the curving stairway at the front of the house that led to most of the housemates' rooms. Some were cavelike, cloaked with dark curtains; some were scattered with clothes and books and bits of uneaten food and a garble of things that couldn't be instantly identified; some were bright with sunlight or painted in wild colors; and all of them were scented with the smoke of cigarettes or marijuana or heroin or incense, depending on the habits of their occupants. None of the housemates were home, but Andre named each one as they pa.s.sed. There was Ruthie and Jason and Victor-all members of Andre's band, Binge-and Sean, who preferred to go by the name Elk, and Patrick, who was almost always at his girlfriend's place, and a woman named Melody who technically still lived in the house but wouldn't be home until December, after she was done traveling in Southeast Asia.

When they returned to the kitchen Claire wandered around it appraisingly, as if pondering whether it was going to be sufficient for her cooking needs, though she'd seen it a couple of weeks before when she'd come to see the room. "Is that a breadmaker?" she asked, pointing to a bright yellow piece of equipment shaped like a giant marshmallow that sat on the counter.

"A microwave." Andre went to it and pressed a b.u.t.ton so the door popped open. "Everyone thinks it's a breadmaker. I suppose 'cause it looks like one."

"I know how to bake bread," she blurted, feeling instantly like an idiot, but then she went on, hoping to seem valuable as a housemate. "I mean, from scratch. Not with a breadmaker."

"Awesome," he said. He wore a cowboy shirt that he'd cut the sleeves off of and a pair of jeans that were ripped at the knees. On the inside of his forearm, from wrist to elbow, there was a tattoo of a cuc.u.mber on fire. The cuc.u.mber was actually a person with dots for eyes and a chef's hat on his head and little green arms that extended out from his sides. In one hand the cuc.u.mber held a spatula, in the other a butcher knife. The cuc.u.mber man also had a mouth, which smiled, though flames were bursting up from the bottom of his cuc.u.mber body and would soon, it seemed, overtake him. Claire thought this tattoo was preposterous. Not that she was against tattoos. Rather, she thought that they should not be comical.

"I like your tattoo," she said.

"Thanks."

"It's got a sense of humor."

"Yeah." He smiled at her appreciatively, nodding his head slowly, as if she'd said something profound. "That's so true. You know, you're one of the only people who have gotten that."

Pride and inane joy surged through her, and in her mind she cast about for more brilliant observations about the tattoo but came up with none.

"You want some toast?" he asked, beginning to make some for himself.

"No thanks." She leaned against a counter, trying to seem comfortable, trying to seem like a housemate, though she didn't feel like one at all, as she watched Andre smear first peanut b.u.t.ter, then maple syrup onto his toast and then press it together, sandwich style. She turned away and stared numbly into the living room, where there was a gla.s.s terrarium against the wall.

"Oh. I forgot to show you. Ruthie's pet," said Andre, gesturing in the direction of the terrarium.

She walked toward it and saw, as she got closer, that there was a tarantula half the size of her hand inside. When she stooped near the gla.s.s, it rose up on its hairy tiptoes, as if about to lunge at her. She stepped back.

"It'll bite," Andre yelled from behind her, and then laughed with exaggerated wickedness, so she didn't know whether to believe him or not. He was a few years older than her, though he seemed younger. He had a boyish quality about him that she'd picked up on immediately. It wasn't innocent, the way an actual boy would be, but a grownup version of a boy: menacing and pranksterish, like any moment he would do anything he wanted. "Sometimes, when Ruthie feeds it, it tries to bite."

"What does it eat?" Claire asked, and the bears came into her mind then, the bears that ate from the canoe in the summertime behind Len's Lookout.

He sat down on the couch without answering her and set his plate on the coffee table. His forehead was rimmed neon green along his scalp, the remnants of a recent dye job. He wore a necklace of silver beads that looked like it came from somewhere far off-India or Guatemala. The hair and the necklace and the extravagant tattoo didn't seem to belong to him, Claire thought, as if the moment they were detached from him, he would look entirely like someone else, like the person who he actually was.

"So did you say you work at Giselle's?"

"Yeah. Have you been there?"