It was a scalding night in DC, but Ava and Taylor didn’t like using the air conditioner. Too expensive. Plus Ava had once confided they preferred sex when it was sweaty hot. Jen, single at the time, had smiled patiently but wanted to kill her.
Jen sat on her bed, on her white cotton sheets, wearing nothing. She liked those moments. Utterly free. No one telling her what to do. No mother about to barge in and call her a slut if she saw her sitting there undressed. Just her and her body.
Zach phoned.
“Watcha up to?” he asked.
“Nothing. Just sitting here.”
“Oh.”
“Without my clothes on.”
He groaned.
“Did you just groan?” she said.
“Of course not.”
“You did. I heard you.”
“I mean, I can’t think of anything in the world I’d rather see than you sitting there. Where are you?”
“In bed.”
“I think my heart’s palpitating.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Here, listen.” The phone made a muffled, scrunching sound. “Hear that?”
She laughed. That niggling unease she had felt after visiting the computer store had totally vanished. She said she wanted to go to a movie sometime. They made plans for an early morning bike ride and said goodnight.
She picked up the small stack of receipts. Older folks, cautious folks, still asked for receipts. The Johnsons had been cautious, although apparently not cautious enough. Jen had glanced at the receipts on Wednesday night when she snuck into the apartment. Although she’d been looking for handwritten notes and not studying the receipts themselves, she had casually noticed what they were for. But could she recall enough of them to figure out which one or ones were missing—which ones had been in the Bible?
She laid the ones she had on the white sheets. They formed a story of the Johnsons’ lives: A second-hand stroller. A fan. A high chair. A hair dryer. A set of dishes. A used refrigerator. A Sunday suit for Delmar.
Was anything missing …? Was it …?
There had been a phone receipt.
Are you sure? she asked herself. For the first time, she wished she had turned Chandler on during her search. She would have an indelible memory of the receipts. Then again, she might also be without a job for bucking orders if Chandler was ever grilled.
Yes, she thought. I’m certain.
She closed her eyes.
She smelled the cotton sheets and the pleasant scent of a light sweat rising from her body. Almost inevitably, she heard her mother scolding her.
She focused on the missing receipt. On a Bible revealing its secret. Used phone. Very cheap. Name on the receipt, Z-something. Zach? Zebra? Zoink?
Jesus, what if?
She picked up her phone.
“Zach, I—”
“I can’t get my mind off—”
“Zach, what was the name of that weird store we went to? The co-op thing?”
He laughed.
“Their name would be on your transaction,” she said.
“I did a trade.”
“For what?”
“I’m putting in a rooftop garden for them.”
“Come on, Zach. They—”
“Anyway, it’s Zombies. Officially, Zombie-something. I think Zombie Industrial Co-operative.”
She was dressed and out the door in two minutes flat.
She pumped her pedals hard as she rode into the wind along the midnight streets.
She was four blocks away from the co-op when she first caught the smoke in the air—not the distant smell of the burning forest, but close by and harsh. By the time she was two blocks away and turning down an alley, the smell had morphed into the acrid scent of an extinguished blaze. It clawed into her nose and throat.
She arrived to see firefighters winding up hoses under their floating light bubbles. Here and there, the brick was charred black. The sunflower solar panels and the roof underneath them were gone, as were the high-up windows and the door. A drone with its own set of lights buzzed overhead and dipped through the space where there had once been an illuminated array of OLED displays. She wondered if they’d ever displayed a picture of a ceiling on fire.
“Anyone hurt?” Jen asked the firefighter who seemed to be in charge. She was a tall, olive-skinned woman wearing a short hijab under her helmet, and had the sorrowful look of someone who’d seen one too many of these.
The woman hesitated. Jen flashed her ID.
“Don’t think so. We haven’t found any remains.”
“What happened?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. It’s an old building. Plus heaps of electronics, solvents, and a biblical amount of junk. Likely an accident, but we’ll have a couple of inspectors out here in the morning.”
The drone buzzed out from the gutted building and returned to its pilot like a well-trained falcon.
Jen jutted her head toward the building. “Can I have a look?”
The firefighter shook her head. “Better not. You never know with these old places. Sorry, but I gotta …” She walked away.
Jennifer stood alone. She surveyed the scene. Firetrucks, firefighters, the floating lights. The strange and beautiful store in ruins. Then she noticed an unmarked car blocking the far end of the alley. Jennifer turned away and rode home.
She had pulled a crappy schedule this month. Tuesday was a single day off. Zach’s call woke her at seven.
“You’re still in bed?” He didn’t sound pleased.
“What time …?”
“You were going to be here at six for our ride.”
Bicycle along the Potomac to Great Falls. Park bikes and scramble along the Billy Goat Trail. Picnic lunch. Sneak into the spot they’d found to make love.
“Your store burned down.”
He laughed. “You were dreaming.”
“The computer co-op. Zombies.”
“Oh, shit.”
She explained what little she knew. He started asking her questions, but she cut him off. “Honey, I’ve had”—she glanced at her phone—“four hours of sleep.” They decided she’d come by his place in the mid-afternoon.
But before she hung up, she said, “Zach, could you do one thing for me? Find out how to reach one of the owners or people who worked there?”
“They all own it. That’s what a co-op is.”
“Can you?”
Before he could ask why, she mumbled goodbye.
As she drifted toward sleep, she thought how nice it would be to have Zach lying next to her. Her thoughts floated pleasantly, but before sleep completely drew her away, her mind tumbled for a second back to Eden and Gray Suit and the Johnsons and the Bible. Her last thought was that she really needed to talk to Les about it all.
“You could have checked with me,” Zach said when she arrived that afternoon. “I mean, we had it planned.”
She had invited Les to go on the ride and hike with them as soon as he got off work at three.
“I needed to …”
“What?”
“Talk to him.”
“Then call him. Spend the whole day tomorrow at work with him. Do sleepovers at their place. This was supposed to be our time.”
“You’re jealous of Les.”
“That’s ridiculous. I barely get to see you, that’s all.”
Jen, too, had been feeling this. They had met almost a year ago. The sex was great; they loved being outdoors; they both loved the antique merry-go-round at the Smithsonian. But there was never enough time together, and they didn’t always see eye to eye on politics and her job. Still, so what? They had decided to live together after his parents exited. He couldn’t afford much for rent, and until her mom was out of the picture, she couldn’t either. Cop pay wasn’t what it used to be, not with so much public funding siphoned off by the private security firms.
Jen said, “We spent half the weekend together.” She playfully touched his long-ago broken nose. “You just wanted to have sex in the woods.”
“Well, yeah,” he said, and turned his eyes away as if he felt childish to have raised a fuss.
Jen rode to the rescue. “Les isn’t arriving for”—she checked the time—“about eight minutes.” She gave him her most mischievous smile. “Quickie?”
He grabbed her hand and they raced inside.
The water level was so far down that the roar of the falls was half of what Jen remembered from a year before. Jen and Les watched kayakers approach what was left of the rapids and then tumble down the river between the exposed rocks. Hikers and picnickers dotted the area. Les pointed to the figure of Zach scrambling over some distant boulders. “That boy has got energy to spare.”
Jen said, “Let’s find a quieter place.”
They walked away from the falls and found a small clearing hidden in the bushes. The roaring water was still audible but muffled by the trees. Cicadas zizzed in the stifling afternoon. They plunked down onto a scraggly patch of parched grass.
“Les, I’ve always told you everything, haven’t I?”
“This about why you turned Chandler off?”
“No, why would you think that?”
He shrugged. “Ah, Cobalt.” He slipped off his shirt and wiped his face with it.
She looked at him. His body was still ripped, even though he was in his forties. Bruises here and there from basketball and work.
“Screw male privilege,” she said, and she pulled off the running bra she’d been wearing for her top.
“Go for it, Cobalt!”
She swatted at him.
“I need to ask you about a work thing.”
“Why did you turn him off?”
“It was … I don’t know. All of a sudden, I didn’t want anyone in my head but me.”
“They could have fired you.”
“Don’t you ever want to turn her off?”
“Christopher calls P.D. my girlfriend.”
“What? You told him?”
“Don’t worry, he’s cool.”
She took a breath. “You know when those guys came in last week? Afterward, I went back to ask Brooks about something else. They were just leaving the meeting room, and I was still around the corner and I, uh …”
“You eavesdropped.”
“No, not on purpose. I didn’t want to see the Maori guy again, so I stood there, sort of frozen.”
“And you overheard him hit on Brooks.”
“Les, I’m being serious.”
They heard a rustle in the bushes, and Jen reached for her sports bra. But instead of a person, a copper-colored doe pushed through the foliage, saw them, and bolted away with an angular jerk. Jen dropped her top back to the ground. She told him what she’d overheard.
Les said, “I keep telling you, don’t worry about what Brooks says.”
“But why would that guy want to know about me anyway?”
“Who knows.”
“Remember, I asked about Eden? Those rumors I’ve been hearing. I—”
But just as Jen was about to say she thought Gray Suit was reacting to her question, just as she was about to tell Les about breaking into the Johnsons’ apartment, getting attacked there, returning for the receipts, Zombie burning down, he interrupted her.
“Of course!”
“What?”
“It must have been the Starlet. Your names are almost the same: Gendra, Jen. And she was peppering him with those questions. Not just asking, but disagreeing with him.”
“I don’t know. I …”
“It’s got to be her. Anyhow, Brooks would never say that about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you kidding? He likes you.”
“How do you—?”
“Come on Jen. Everyone knows he likes you.”
A flicker of doubt crept into Jennifer’s mind. Maybe she had heard wrong. Maybe it was her own stupid insecurities grabbing her again.
He said, “Don’t let those guys into your head. One extra voice is more than enough.” He reached over and playfully wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
“Hey,” she said, “I’m half undressed.”
“Yeah, and I’m gay! Anyhow, I’m your buddy.”
“Well buddy,” she said, and felt herself relaxing, “you’re pretty great.”
“That is so true. Find Zach?”
“Let’s go climbing.”