Brandon felt the woman’s eyes on him as soon as she stepped on the train. She was looking for clues. That’s what people did when they saw him. First they stared into his eyes, as if his pupils were apertures that would reveal absolutes. Then they examined the shape of his eyebrows, the size of his nose, the outline of his lips. And when those features failed to deliver a verdict, their gaze dropped. Now he felt the woman’s eyes pat down his chest, assess the veins on his hands, measure the size of his feet. He was, he supposed, an optical illusion to her—from this angle, man, from that angle, woman. And people, he had noticed, rarely tired of staring at optical illusions.
As the J Train groaned to a stop at Canal Street, the woman’s eyes collided with his and he smiled at her. He always smiled at the people he caught midstare. Once in a while the overture disarmed them; their expression would soften, and he would feel as if he had affected a small change in their perceptions. But this woman quickly averted her gaze. When she got off at Delancey Street, Brandon closed his eyes and tried not to think as the train rattled over the Williamsburg Bridge.
The neighbor’s baby was crying when he unlocked the door to his walk-up. He dropped his backpack just inside and crossed the small living room and kitchen alcove to his even smaller bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed and plugged his phone into its charger. At this hour on a Monday, he would normally be at Park Manor. But he wasn’t going to Park Manor ever again. He could have stayed in the library and done his homework there, but he hadn’t felt like doing homework. He hadn’t felt like doing anything. He still couldn’t get Hodges’s words out of his head. You fed her ice cream? On whose authority? And he couldn’t stop thinking about Josie’s betrayal or her contemptuous remark. You call yourself a man?
Fuck Josie, he told himself now. So what if he had cried about Lucy? Who was Josie or anyone to define the appropriate response to grief for a man or a woman? Who was she to categorize him?
He ran his palm against his jaw. He hadn’t shaved for two days, and the scratchy stubble on his chin was a reassuring reality that counterbalanced the discomfort he felt when he lifted his shirt over his head, struggled out of his uncomfortable compression T-shirt, and confronted the reality of his breasts. After years of binding, they were like two deflated balloons.
He got in the shower. As the hot water beat against his hair, he told himself he would call Dr. Silverman’s office first thing in the morning. He was supposed to make that call. Lucy’s death was a sign that he needed to move forward in his journey. All the paperwork was done. Every penny he’d saved—along with Baiba’s three thousand dollars—was sitting in a bank account waiting for him to make the call.
His phone was ringing as he turned off the shower. He yanked a towel off the rack and wrapped it around his hips as he went to answer. Baiba’s voice in his ear said, “Brandon, where are you? I’ve been calling you all day.”
“My phone died.”
“I heard what happened in Ms. Hodges’s office. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He put the phone on speaker and set it on the bed so he could dry himself. “I’m glad it happened. Glad to be out of there. I only stayed for Lucy.” As soon as he spoke the words, he realized his unintended slight. “And you, of course,” he added, “but we’ll still be friends, won’t we?”
She didn’t need to know that he wanted to be more than her friend. He could never tell her how he really felt about her. She might treat him differently if she knew that sometimes at night in his room, he imagined lying in bed with her. That he would sometimes touch himself while imagining her touching a part of him that didn’t even exist. Baiba would never want him in that way, he supposed.
“Of course we’ll still be friends,” she said. “But you don’t have to leave Park Manor like this.”
“I turned in my badge, Baiba. And you know how Hodges feels about me anyway. She’s not going to have me back, and besides, I don’t want to come back.”
“But I talked to her,” Baiba said quickly. “I told her things don’t run nearly as well when you’re not there. I told her you’re the best person we have in Nostalgia. That I need you—”
“You don’t need me. You’ll find someone else just as good. Park Manor is every caregiver’s dream job—if you can stand wearing those burgundy polo shirts.” He thought that would make her laugh, but it didn’t.
“I don’t want someone else. I want you. Please come back. Please.”
Brandon pulled boxers out of his drawer. He stared down at himself and replayed her words. I don’t want someone else. I want you. If only she were saying those words about him, about her personal feelings for him. But she wasn’t, of course. She wanted him back because of his competence and dependability, his willingness to do whatever she needed him to do. She knew her job would be much harder without him there. “How can you ask me that, Baiba?”
And then Baiba began to cry. She blurted out the whole story about Julia Merchant, her hidden camera, and what the camera had recorded. Brandon stopped dressing and sat on the edge of the bed.
“She thinks you gave medicine to her mother last night.”
“Well, I did. You know that. So what?”
“So Julia Merchant is making a big deal out of it. Hodges is afraid she’ll go to the press and say bad things about Park Manor. She told Julia there was only water in the cup. And she got Cheryl to promise that she’ll go along with that story.”
“And now she wants me to lie, too? Why would I do that for her?”
Baiba spoke very softly now. “Because I’m going to lose my job if you don’t.”
“She threatened you?”
“It was awful, Brandon. She knows I’ve been looking the other way while you helped Cheryl. And she knows I unlocked Lucy’s room for you this morning. That was on Julia’s video too. If Park Manor fires me after I’ve been there five years, where am I going to go? No other facility will touch me.” She started to cry again.
She needed him right now, he thought, and he felt impelled by deeply ingrained protective instincts to respond to her need. He wished he could transport himself through the phone, hold her in his arms, and stroke her hair. She would let him do that, he thought. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Please. Just tell me what you need me to do.”
She blew her nose. “I need you to come back,” she said. “Only until this blows over. And tell anybody who asks that you gave Lucy water in that cup. I’m sorry, Brandon. I’m really sorry.”
Brandon closed his eyes and sighed. “Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll do it. I’ll come back tomorrow. But I’m doing it for you, Baiba. Not for her.”