five

The mal de mer wakes me up. Mr. Wallace’s ghost is silent and limp across the street. Next to my bed, there’s a tray with some bread and a plate of leftovers, but I’m too nauseated to reach for it. I check my underwear. Clean. I tiptoe to the bathroom and try with the toilet paper. Nothing. I know I won’t fall back asleep, so I do what I’ve done almost every night since the thought first occurred. I button my jeans, pull my hair into a messy bun, and I scan my room for his socks. Dark gray, slightly worn on the big toe, they smell like a basketball game. I’ve learned to roll them up so they don’t bunch in my shoes. I’m a women’s eight, Elliot a man’s eleven. He forgot them here the last time we slept together, at the end of the summer, just before school started. That time.

When I bend down to tie my shoelaces, it feels like I’m on a hellish plane ride. The challah beckons, so I take a bite, hoping it will ease the sudden motion sickness. I brush my teeth twice, swishing and spitting furiously. My face is pale, and the freckles across my nose are graying. I have a crooked mouth.

I have two cameras to choose from: Lauren, the film camera (named after Lauren Bacall) and Bogart, the digital one, after her true love. They (the actors) met on the set of one of Dad’s favorite movies, To Have or Have Not, second only to the legendary To Kill a Mockingbird, and that is only because Dad wants to be Atticus Finch. We used to watch these old movies together, when Mom was out late or in New York for a show. I liked to practice looking over my shoulder, lighting someone’s imaginary cigarette, talking out the side of my mouth with that sultry voice. They barely even kiss in that movie, but Lauren Bacall taught me more about sex than sex itself. After watching the movie together, Elliot once told me I looked like her. Of course he did. I think that’s when I gave in.

I walk past my parents’ bedroom. Their door is open. His snores and her breath are warming up the hallway. I feel guilty, but I don’t know what else to do. They’re good parents. I’m just so tired. And, for better or worse, I can’t sleep until I go out there.

While checking Bogart for juice, I think about the Picasso. The questions keep coming. Is the sculpture back up? Is it in the basement of the museum, where they keep the broken or ugly pieces? Do they have clinics for wounded art? I imagine a forensic scientist wearing goggles, brushing her hand across the sculpture’s swollen belly, trying to determine how it happened. Who did this? Why? I check my recent calls: 240-667-8900. Is your light on tonight?

The bike rests against the back wall, and despite my general unease when I push the pedal, it does not disappoint. The tires are full and the breeze washes over the nausea. The first stop is Adam’s house, but it doesn’t count because I never really stop. I just have to go around the cul-de-sac and touch the mailbox with my right hand, like a trigger. It’s a sad compulsion. The first time I went out at night, I came here but the lights were off. Adam’s room faces the backyard. I didn’t really want to see him. I just didn’t want to betray him. Going out to take pictures is the sort of thing we used to do together. So, every time I go now, I pass by and touch the box, and sometimes I imagine it’s a switch and that’s how the lights come on. That’s when I light up a house somewhere in Northwest DC, and all I have to do is find it.

Wisconsin and Connecticut, the main street arteries, are forbidden. It’s too easy to find something there. It has to be a house. People have to live there. People who are sleeping, people who forgot to turn off all the lights, people who are too scared to turn off all the lights.

My tires cut the dry leaf piles on the back roads toward Chevy Chase. It hasn’t rained in three weeks, and my feet itch like mad in these nasty socks. The oaks out here are enormous. I see nothing but street lamps so far. It must be past one. I’ve noticed the darkest hours are between one and four.

There. On the next block, left side, three houses up—a light is on. My guess is it’s a living room, maybe dining. I stop the bike across the street. Before setting up, I check the houses around me. The rest of the block is lights out. Nobody is making secret phone calls in their parked cars. All the retrievers are snoozing in their monogrammed beds.

I forgot my tripod, which has never happened, but then again I’ve never knocked over a sculpture or deliberately messed with Shabbat, so this could be the new me, going bad like a child star on house arrest. I look for something flat to set the camera on, but the front garden has pretty stone walls that are too uneven to work with. I could try the roof of a station wagon, but I’m afraid the little red light flashing inside may be an alarm. The ground will have to do.

I take a composition book out of my trusted tote to even out the grass. The camera lens is wide open, like on a dentist’s recliner. I check again. It’s definitely a living room.

I make like a Navy Seal and lie perfectly still. My heart is finally beating, the way it does right when I’m about to take a picture. I Zen up and ignore the bed of acorns poking me everywhere.

It’s perfect. There are bookshelves in the back, a coffee mug, a sweater draped on the arm of a green sofa. It takes forever for the lens to shut; my favorite kind of wait, when you can hear the light churning in there.

When I get back on the bike, I’m something close to happy. But happy is a ripple that hits land pretty fast these days and, after the first hill, I’m already thinking about him. I’m remembering my hair on his chin and him blowing it away. He just stared afterwards, right into my face. Neither one of us could bear to move. He was wearing a gray shirt that smelled like us. I was wearing a red button-down I stole from my dad’s closet. At least three buttons were undone.

You could see whatever you wanted, if you were looking, and he was definitely looking. I felt brave. His arm was sprawled across my waist. I looked down at his toes, then the creases of the sheets, then a strand of my dark hair again—a little mischief, a little pride. The whole thing felt so big and so little at the same time, like it could never really leave the room, like it would always be between the two of us. I was awake and asleep; contained and in pieces. Whoever says sex is nothing hasn’t had sex with somebody who stared at their face.

A drop of something warm dribbles down my chin. I take one hand off the handlebar to touch it. It’s blood. My lips are cut. I’ve been biting down on the memory.

I wonder what I could offer this ghost, what I could do to make it go away. I already painted over my walls. I throw up. I don’t sleep. I lie. I yell at my mother. I ignore my best friend. I push innocent sculptures. I used to make things. Now I just destroy them. Maybe I could bike to 18th Street and pay twenty bucks for fake sorcery, some kind of exorcism, somebody who will tell me to put garlic in my pillow and a pound of sugar under my bed. What do you want, Elliot? You happened. You left. Now stop happening.

A block or so before my own home, I take out my phone to try Paloma’s number again, but it looks like she beat me to it.

IS THIS MAGGIE? her text reads.

I type No and ride back to bed.