Trip Through Your Wires. Sarah Layden

Pantry, two boys fought in Spanish over how to spend their shared dollar. Alone in her car, she whispered phrases. “Dímelo. Quiero un Kit-Kat.” The language brought Ben back to her, and she felt bruised by the need to conjure him and the need to forget. Small moments—his green eyes grazing her body in a way no one had before or since, his calloused hand resting on her bare shoulder—made more delicious and painful because they would never happen again.

      In a matter of days, the spacious Halpern house began to shrink by inches. Carey grew tired of pretending she had a job, of the pointless dressing up in clothes that chafed her soul. Again she claimed to call in sick, though no one had noticed or asked.

      Nicole had agreed to meet her for lunch at Edna’s Diner on West 38th Street, a fixture in the African-American community. Back in high school, Nicole had a catchphrase: Wanna slum? And Carey would push aside her conscience to laugh. Slumming: two white teenage girls leaving their mostly-white subdivisions near 71st Street, driving four miles south to where gangs allegedly proliferated, unless the talk was high school bravado. 38th Street was lined with many of the same retail stores and restaurants as high-end 86th Street, north of their turf, but grittier. More litter, more bars. They were never asked to show identification at Ralph’s Spirits & Tobacco. Neon billboards advertised strip clubs and adult video stores, which neighbored doughnut shops and fabric stores. A gentlemen’s club sat isolated in a small field, with the back loading docks of Meijer on one side and Best Buy on the other. Wanna slum? Nicole would ask, and Carey always went. They’d occupy tables adjacent to blacks and Hispanics, but never mingled. This had been years ago, and they’d changed. But their shared history remained.

      Nicole, in a cardigan and jeans over her black leotard, was scanning the menu when Carey slid into the booth across from her. She’d pulled her dark blond hair into a loose braid, and the line between her eyebrows deepened.

      “I’ve only got an hour,” Nicole said.

      “Hello to you, too. I’m fine, thanks. How’s your day?”

      Nicole’s blue eyes softened. “Sorry. I’m so used to planning life around these classes. It’s a grind.” A grind, clearly, that she loved. Nicole, radiant and glowing, a supple-limbed dance teacher, a contributor. In high school, Carey had teased Nicole about her flamboyant arm gestures, or the health hazards of too much time spent in tights and leotards. Carey had run distance, endurance. Her arms pumped like thin pistons, biceps, trapezius, and triceps like hard fruit beneath her skin. In Mexico, Ben once had traced his finger down her arm, outlining the muscle, and whistled. On a good day, running had felt like flying.

      Today she was conscious of the little fold of skin pouching over her jeans. And after showering, the wiggle of her upper arms as she applied lotion to a rash that had sprouted overnight.

      Derek, the owner, stood tall behind the long lunch counter. He had taken over after his mother died. A decade later, some customers still complained Derek’s pies and pancakes weren’t as good. But business hadn’t slowed.

      “Be with you in mere minutes,” he said.

      Everyone knew Derek. He sponsored breakfasts for the Boys and Girls Clubs. He donated to charity auctions, and the year before hosted a well-publicized benefit for the family of a sixteen-year-old murder victim. He knew faces and orders but not names. “There’s the man,” he’d say by way of a greeting, pointing a long finger at a patron.

      “Ladies,” he said. “Ms. Jenks, you know you want a slice of my boysenberry pie.”

      Nicole blushed hotly. “Please, it’s Nicole,” she said. “And you remember Carey.”

      “Who could forget Strawberry Pancakes?” Derek grinned. He was maybe five years older than them, solidly built.

      “I’ll get your coffee,” he said, winking. Nicole’s eyes trailed after him.

      Carey offered Nicole her napkin. “You’ve got a little drool going on,” she said.

      “Shut up.”

      “He knows your name.”

      Nicole wouldn’t look at Carey. “His daughter takes beginning tap.”

      “So he’s married.”

      Now she glanced up quickly. “He doesn’t wear a ring.”

      High school was years before, but Carey could still hear adolescent Nicole in her head: “Wanna slum?” Nicole often had declared, “So many black girls at Township get pregnant by junior year, you’d think it was a course requirement.” Gutlessly, Carey had said nothing.

      “I heard he’s single,” Nicole said.

      “What about Bob?” Carey asked, meaning Bob Kemper, who bartended at McAlestar’s.

      “That movie was OK.” Nicole stared at the traffic out the plate glass window. At the next booth an older man in suspenders read the newspaper: Ben’s passport photo was printed on the front page. Carey was relieved when the man folded the paper and laid it down, out of sight.

      Derek returned with his notepad. “So, Ni-cole,” Derek said. “Will it be waffles? Will it be pancakes? Don’t keep me in suspense.” He placed a palm over his heart and leaned down towards her.

      “Chocolate-chip pancakes, please.” She smiled at him.

      “Sweets for the sweet,” he said. “And for you, Strawberry?”

      He did not call Carey by name. He did not lean down, swoonily awaiting a response.

      “Chicken salad,” Carey said. “On wheat.”

      “Huh,” he said, frowning as he wrote it down. He retreated behind the counter, and Nicole held up her palm to preempt Carey’s questions. They’d known each other long enough to converse wordlessly, but now the silence settled thickly around them. Carey couldn’t read it.

      They were out of synch, a poorly dubbed movie. After Carey had been sent home from Mexico, mired in a swamp of grief, Nicole coaxed her back into the world. Or at least out drinking at McAlestar’s. In Chicago, they had spent days in requisite disappointing jobs, and nights in smoke-filled lounges. Bars with leather couches. Groping men they clutched, let inside. Brandon, who’d admired her eyes, slept with her, and never called again. A symbolically anonymous phase of Bills, three of them blending in her mind into one person, forgettable. But she remembered herself and Nicole, mascara-smeared, out for coffee on Sunday mornings, something to cut the gin breath, lighting cigarette after cigarette.

      They kept it up for months, years, until one night Carey was sitting alone on the living room futon, between two men Nicole hadn’t wanted to invite over. Nicole had to work in the morning, a new job selling classified ads for the Tribune, and she went to her room. Carey did not sleep that night. She began going for coffee alone. In the mornings Nicole would watch her from their kitchen breakfast bar, until Carey would finally ask, “What?” Nicole would shrug her shoulders and busy herself with a magazine, which she now stacked neatly on their secondhand coffee table. “It’s just, when was the last time you had a second date?” she asked rhetorically. “Ben was your last boyfriend. Even if you won’t talk, Carey, he’s still gone.”

      She’d edged up to that uncomfortable truth, and for three days, Carey could barely speak—to Nicole, or anyone. She stayed out of the apartment. She spent a lonesome evening at Navy Pier amid the garish lights and tourists and rides, wandering aimlessly or sitting alone on a bench. Recalling other benches where she’d waited, when the wrong man appeared.

      Carey and Nicole would turn twenty-nine this year. They’d hung on to each other. Nicole either hadn’t heard the news about Ben’s passport, or didn’t care, and Carey said nothing. They made small-talk. Carey zoned out during Nicole’s convoluted explanation of the dance studio’s budget. When Carey mentioned the sickos she’d encountered in chat rooms, Nicole grimaced, implying that she, Carey, was a sicko by association. Derek saluted them when they left. “Until Tuesday, Ni-cole,” he said.

      Outside the restaurant, Carey lit a cigarette and held out her pack.