Perfect Fifths Read online

  Jessica looks down, stomps her foot and grunts. Powerless to resist the overwhelming paranoia about her deteriorating appearance, she must make an immediate detour to the nearby bathroom. “I need to use the ladies’ room. Can you wait?”

  “Wait is a synonym for ‘loiter,’” Marcus replies, making Jessica smile, if not with her mouth, then with her eyes. “I’ve already set a precedent.”

  “What I mean is, I don’t know what your travel plans are, if you have to be anywhere else—”

  “I don’t have to be anywhere else.” Marcus waves her concerns away with his palms. “I’ve got time.”

  “Are you sure?” she says in a rush as she frisks into the bathroom, not waiting to hear the answer.

  “As long as it takes,” Marcus says when she’s out of earshot. “I can wait.”

  eighteen

  The donut, it seems, was the least of Jessica’s problems.

  “Oh my God,” she groans, shivering at her cadaverous complexion in the bathroom mirrors. “I look like a hemophilic vampire.” She splashes cold water on her face, then gently slaps pink into her cheeks with her fingertips.

  A pretween girl wearing a pink tracksuit and matching slip-on sheepskin boots approaches the sink next to Jessica’s. The girl is all aglow with a tropical suntan that debunks Jessica’s hastily cobbled theory that the fluorescent bathroom lighting is responsible for her skin’s greenish, ghoulish cast.

  “Impothible,” the girl lisps.

  “That’s nice of you to say,” Jessica says to the girl, genuinely touched by the reassurance.

  “Vampirths can’t be seen in mirrorths,” she explains, the speech impediment the result of a second mortgage’s worth of orthodontia. “No reflethion.”

  “Oh,” Jessica replies.

  “You juth need a makeover,” the girl says over the toilet-flushing cacophony.

  “Amber!” shouts a shrill voice from one of the bathroom stalls. “What did I tell you about talking to strangers?”

  Amber glares at the closed door, then twirls her finger cuckoo-style for Jessica’s benefit. Crazy, she mouths.

  “I can see you!” admonishes the mother. “Through the crack in the door.”

  “Ewwwwww,” says Amber. “Thath dithguthing! Talking to me while you do number two. Groth!”

  Jessica hears the unmistakable sonic boom of a mother biting her tongue.

  “She’ll be in there foreeeeeever,” Amber whisper-whines. “Sheth got irritable bowel thyndrome.”

  Jessica recoils from this news—a classic overshare—then recovers. “You should be nicer to her.”

  Amber responds with a calisthenic eye roll.

  Jessica tries to shut out the mental image of Amber’s mother’s inflamed colon. She turns back to the mirror, and what she sees is barely an improvement. This is not how she wants to look during her reunion with Marcus Flutie, all puffy-eyed and hollow-cheeked, with a decomposing nose and leprositic lips. She agrees with Amber’s assessment, but she is not one of those travelers who have invested in miniatures of every imaginable high-end toiletry and beauty gadget. Jessica remembers waking up midflight from LGA to LAX to the sight (winged elbows), sound (cracklesnap!), and deeply unsettling smell (charbroiled human hair) of the passenger squeezed next to her in the middle seat trying to flatten her frizz with a travel-size rechargeable wireless straightening iron. That woman would have been adequately prepared for a surprise run-in with her ex-boyfriend in the middle of Newark Liberty International Airport. But Jessica is not. With the exception of a tiny pot of Be You Tea Shoppe–brand lip balm, all her makeup and ancillary grooming products are stowed in the suitcase she reluctantly checked when she arrived at the airport, the suitcase that is currently making its way to St. Thomas, USVI, on Clear Sky Flight 1884, the one containing not only all the summery party clothes she needs for the wedding she may or may not get to but all the high-tech subzero outerwear required for surviving her wintertime stint in the Chicago suburbs with all twenty fingers and toes intact.

  Jessica unscrews the tiny teapot of Sweet Orange Marmalade Lip Plumping Balm, dips her index finger in, and swirls it around.

  “I love the Be You Tea Shoppe!” Amber exclaims as she pushes the nozzle on the soap dispenser. “I had my lath birthday there. Look!” She turns and booty-pops two letters sequined across her tiny butt: BU! Ah yes, Bethany had told Jessica she hopes to keep this aspect of her business alive, a clothing line to promote female empowerment, positive body image, and healthy self-esteem.

  “AMBER JEWEL!” cries her mom from the stall.

  Another eye roll, one that has just earned Amber a coveted spot on the U.S. women’s gymnastics squad for the 2012 Olympics. “I wanted to get the Little Ladie’s Luxe Life package for my birthday, but Mom thaid it wath too ethpenthive. We did the Mother-Daughter Marveluth Mini-Me Makeover inthead.”

  Jessica opens her mouth to tell Amber that she is in fact related to the beauty and the brains behind the Be You Tea Shoppe, and that one of the gorgeous multiculti, generation-spanning Daughter-Mother-Grandmother trios used in the brand’s advertising and promotional materials (the one representing all-American blondes) is her own niece, sister, and mother. It would be intended as a fun nugget of info, something Amber could go back and tell her friends about: Hey, I met the sister of the owner of the Be You Tea Shoppe …

  But on second thought, this tidbit has little positive value and could even have a detrimental effect on the young girl. Jessica can just imagine the withering replies from Amber’s pretween cohorts. Um, like, did you get any free stuff? No? Then, like, who gives a flying crap? More likely, Amber would predict the pointlessness of sharing such a lame story with her friends back home, yet still end up feeling bad about herself because she wasn’t born to a family of millionaire entrepreneurs enabling her to become the internationally recognized face of a brand by the tender age of seven. Jessica knows that all the Be You Tea Shoppes will shut down within the year, which only reinforces the futility of such a comment.

  It’s a career objective that has crossed over into Jessica’s real life: No one should end a conversation with her feeling worse than when it began. In her many hours of listening to the Girls tell their stories, and listening to the Girls react to the stories they’ve been told, Jessica has discovered a certain tactfulness she lacked when she was younger. Just because she has something to add to a discussion doesn’t mean she should. With this in mind, she puts a restraining order on her tongue, wishing she had an unopened sample of a future must-have something-or-other to offer Amber instead of a silenced anecdote.

  Amber pounds the nozzle on the soap dispenser once more, rubs the cheap soap into her hands, and waves them under the electric eye to start the water. Then she begins to sing. “Happy Birthday to You.” She has a high, tinny voice, befitting all the metal in her mouth. “Happy birthday to you …”

  Jessica is stunned by this song in this place. “Is today your birthday?”

  “No, my birthday ith in Auguth,” Amber says. “Why?”

  “You were singing the Birthday Song.”

  “Ith juth a hand-wathing song,” Amber replies with a shrug. “So I wath my hanth long enough to kill all the nathy germth that make you thick. We were juth talking about birthdays, and I gueth it wath on my mind. But it workth with the alphabet thong, too.”

  “Oh,” Jessica says, feeling sheepish. “Right.”

  After two years of working with the Girls, who always know better than she does, Jessica has also developed a talent for reading unspoken questions. She goes out of her way to pose such queries rhetorically, so none of the Girls feels embarrassed by ignorance or curiosity. Even though the youngest high school storytellers are a few years older than Amber, Jessica can see the obvious question forming in Amber’s mind: When is your birthday?

  Amber’s about to ask it, too, when a toilet flushes and a stall door bursts open to reveal a permatanned anatomic impossibility in the same pink outfit as her daughter, a foolish attempt at a
gelessness that only draws more attention to the long decades of hard living separating the two. She is what Las Vegas would look like if it suddenly decided it didn’t want to be Sin City anymore but, rather, the high-strung mom of a ten-year-old girl.

  “Amber! What did I tell you about talking to strangers?”

  “To not to,” Amber answers in a monotone.

  “You won’t be happy until you get kidnapped, raped, and left for dead.”

  Jessica is shocked by the violent outburst and wonders if such demonstrations of maternal anxiety are the cause or effect of the woman’s screeching colon.

  Her daughter, however, is unfazed. “I’ll get my own Amber Alert,” she says tartly.

  “What did I do to deserve this?” her mom snarls heavenward before grabbing her daughter by the hoodie and dragging her out of the bathroom without, Jessica notes, washing her hands first. Both mother and daughter have messages of female empowerment, positive body image, and healthy self-esteem advertised across their asses: BU!

  Jessica isn’t disgusted by Amber’s mom; she feels sorry for her. She’s just another mom trying to use rules to protect her daughter from harm. Jessica imagines Sunny reading aloud from her next essay:

  Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t do drugs. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink and drive. Don’t have sex. Wear a condom. Wear sunblock. Wear a seat belt. Wear a helmet. If you see something, say something. Just say no. Stop, drop, and roll. Stop, look, and listen. Look both ways before you cross the street…

  Safety is an illusion. Bad things can happen to anyone at any time, whether you follow the rules or not. You can check left, check right, check left again before you step off the curb and into the crosswalk, but that won’t stop an anonymous asshole in his shitty pickup from putting you in intensive care …

  Jessica shakes the voice out of her head, searches inside the bag for her cell phone, and checks for any missed calls. There aren’t any She thinks back to her visit from the night before, when Sunny’s parents promised Jessica that Sunny really could hear her, even if she couldn’t respond. Were they delusional or optimistic? Is there a difference when your only daughter has been in a coma for three days? Jessica wonders whether it would be worthwhile to call the hospital and request that the phone be put up to Sunny’s ear so she can tell her a story she’s—no! not dying, bad choice of word—living to hear.

  “Hey, Sunny,” Jessica would say “Guess who’s waiting for me outside the bathroom door right now?”

  What else is there to say? “He looks like a god.” And? “I look like a gorgon because I haven’t gotten any sleep since I found out about you.” Then? “So get your ass out of bed, Sunny! Your coma is really taking a toll on my personal life.” Finally? “I’m sorry I can’t joke about this. You are such an incredible girl. Wake up, Sunny The world will be so much worse off without you …”

  The phone shakes in her palm as if she’s receiving a call, but she’s not. Jessica decides she isn’t prepared for Sunny and stuffs the phone back into one of the pockets.

  She studies her face once more, trying to see herself as Marcus might see her. She acknowledges that the view isn’t too pretty, and she knows there is no way she can pull herself together. There will be no “marveluth” makeover, no transformative miracle to be found in a tiny teapot. This is what she looks like today, even if it isn’t a fair representation of her attractiveness on any other day. And because Jessica won’t be seeing Marcus again anytime in the near future, this is the image he’ll be left with. This is how he’ll remember her.

  Rather than lament the unfairness of the situation (Why couldn’t I have run into him last week? I totally had my shit together last week), Jessica gamely accepts her ugly reality and even divines an advantage to playing up her contagious appearance: It will diffuse any hint of sexual tension between them. Not that she’s allowed herself to acknowledge any attraction so far. But Marcus is Marcus, after all. Someone who can sexualize just about anything, even the removal of a sprinkle from one’s cheek. Someone who has made prudence in thought and action even more difficult by having the nerve to look better than ever.

  And it’s been, what, almost two years since Jessica had sex? Doesn’t she have needs? But consider the curious circumstances of that last lay: exes fucking for old time’s sake. Sex recycling is common practice among consenting adults of a certain age, so Jessica’s one-night stand with Len Levy would hardly seem worthy as a source of guilt and regret—that is, until it spawned a nerdcore breakup anthem of guilt and regret. Jessica has lazily surrendered to familiar temptations before and has suffered extraordinarily awkward postsex consequences. She chalks it up to a lesson learned and will not let it happen again.

  She is intentionally careless with the lip balm, smearing it all over her decaying nostrils and dry lips, hoping it makes her look even less sexy than she did before she entered the bathroom.

  “Happy birthday to you,” Jessica sings as she washes the sticky goo off her fingers, her voice echoing in the suddenly empty, eerily quiet bathroom. Then she gets serious with the greasy face in the mirror. “You are not sixteen anymore.”

  The words have barely escaped her lips when her eye catches the coin-op feminine product dispenser. This inspires another protective layer of subterfuge.

  Aha! she thinks. I’ll fake my period, too!

  This is not the first time Jessica has faked her period. The first time she faked her period, she was (ahem) sixteen years old and motivated to do so for very different reasons. When she was a sophomore in high school, she stopped menstruating. Since she was a virgin with a vacuum-packed hymen, this wasn’t cause for contraceptive alarm; however, her mother feared the pubescent reversal could be the sign of a more serious medical problem. To assuage her mother’s fears, every twenty-eight days, Jessica dramatically doubled over in cramps and ostentatiously disposed of (unused) tampon applicators in trash cans all over the house. Jessica Darling was the Meryl Streep of bogus menses.

  Now she loudly pounds the machine with her fist, waits for a minute to pass, then at last emerges from the bathroom to find Marcus unmoved from his spot.

  “I had a fight with the tampon dispenser,” Jessica explains.

  A puzzled look passes across Marcus’s face.

  “I won. I got what I needed. For you know. My period.”

  Marcus is more confused than discomforted by this menstrual non sequitur. He senses that Jessica is awaiting some sort of response. He relents in the form of a simpleminded “Okay.”

  Jessica follows up with a theatrical, tubercular cough. “Oh, and I have a cold,” she says through her nose. “A nasty one, too. You should probably keep your distance.”

  “Okay,” Marcus says again, this time taking a giant step backward for effect.

  nineteen

  They resume walking, destination undecided.

  “I missed my flight,” Jessica explains, remembering to talk through her nose. “I’ve got two hours–ish until I find out whether I can get out of here on standby.” She pauses. “Wait, why are you here? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

  Marcus doesn’t hesitate. “No classes right now; it’s the reading period before finals.” He goes on to say that Princeton sticks to the old-fashioned system of administrating final exams after the students return from winter break. “I’ve only got one in-class exam, and it’s not until next week. So I don’t have to be on campus right now.”

  “Does that mean you’re coming or going?”

  This time Marcus takes a few steps forward before responding. “Both. And neither.”

  Jessica has to physically restrain herself from throwing up her hands in exasperation and fleeing in the opposite direction. Two seconds into their first conversation in over three years, and he’s already speaking in typically cryptic tongues.

  Marcus is nearly knocked over by the waves of angry energy. He knows he must choose his next words carefully. “A trip to New Orleans. Overbooked. Next flight leaves tomorrow.”

  The
se obfuscating half-sentences aren’t lies. (There was a trip to New Orleans. There was an overbooked flight he looked into. His next flight does leave tomorrow.) But they don’t reveal the full truth. (He returned from New Orleans. The overbooked flight is the one leaving in two hours, which Jessica has little hope of getting on. Tomorrow’s flight is the same as Jessica’s, departing for St. Thomas.) To his relief, his misleading explanation seems to satisfy Jessica, who nods as if she understands.

  Marcus knows the next question is risky. But he can’t quell his curiosity. Why is she—and now he—headed to the Virgin Islands? A winter getaway is the logical answer, but he suspects it’s not the right one. Jessica doesn’t seem to be in a frivolous-vacation frame of mind.

  “What about you? What’s in St. Thomas?”

  “Well, I’m actually headed to St. John, but I have to fly in to St. Thomas and take the ferry—” Jessica stops dead, chokes on her breath, coughs for real. “Wait. How did you know I was flying to St. Thomas?”

  Marcus feigns nonchalance. “It’s kind of funny, actually.”

  Jessica turns to stone.

  “Not ha-ha funny, but…” He doesn’t bother filling in the rest when he sees a thick layer of permafrost forming over her already hardened surfaces. “I heard your name announced. ‘This is a final boarding call for Clear Sky Flight 1884 with nonstop service to St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. Final boarding call for passenger Jessica Darling.’”

  Her face warms, softens. He heard her name. She recalls her first impression of the accident, how it had seemed as if he chose that exact spot on the floor as if waiting for her. In a way, he had anticipated her arrival. He had heard her name.

  Both Marcus and Jessica silently ask themselves the same questions at the same time. How would she have reacted to the sound of his name? Would she have allowed herself to believe it was him? Would she have looked for him? Or kept on running? The answers come easily. If it had been up to her, they would not be standing together, face-to-face, right now. They both know it.