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“Why are you lying to me?” The words hang in the air like ice.
Jimmy opens his mouth. Kim’s eyes tunnel into him, long and dark and empty. His first thought—Lying to you? I’m not lying to you—dries in his throat. He swallows tightly. His mind reaches, without even thinking about it, for that eternal wellspring of smooth excuses, the ones that smell like late nights and black ice on cement. They’re already starting to float up: I was waiting until you’d finished your exam; I was going to tell you today; I didn’t want to bother you.
Another voice says: find out what she knows first, don’t give anything away, don’t admit to anything—
So he stands there, frozen, his mouth open, his pulse hammering.
Kim cuts through his thoughts with a knife-bladed sigh. She shrugs off the covers and twists her legs out of bed, then bends low to pick up her shirt from where it landed on the carpet last night. She pulls it on over herself unselfconsciously, and stands and moves to her wardrobe, finding underwear and jeans and dressing like he’s not there.
Jimmy watches.
And Kim passes him, brushing close against the corner of her bed to avoid even touching, then she’s out through her bedroom door.
Something snaps. “Kim!” he calls, and he hurries after her into the living room. He’s fast enough that he catches her moving past the coffee table, catches her glancing down at his college notes, her profile flat and unchanged. She keeps going, heading smoothly through into the kitchen. He stops at the counter.
She searches through a cupboard and pulls out an empty glass. Moves to the sink and twists the faucet then holds the glass under the water. They both watch it slowly fill. She turns off the faucet.
“Kim,” Jimmy says, again.
She stands there, full glass of water in her hand, staring into the sink as if there’s still something to watch. Her hair spills over the shoulders of her striped shirt, over the fragile arc of her neck.
He tears his eyes away and stares down at his hands instead. Stares down at them lying flat on the cold countertop. White on the grey metal. “Listen, Kim, you’re right,” he says to the back of his fingers, then he looks up. “Okay, you’re right. I haven’t told you what’s been going on.”
Kim turns to him now. She raises her eyebrows. It’s the only part of her expression that changes at all. The rest of her face is still flat, almost expressionless. Though maybe there’s a quiet downturn in the corner of her eyes—something like betrayal, maybe.
It stops him short again. “Kim, I—” He hears the little strangled sound that follows his words as if it’s somebody else making it.
Kim’s eyebrows inch higher.
And Jimmy bunches his hands into fists on the counter. He opens his mouth again and gets ready to say—what, exactly? I want to be a lawyer?
He hears that strangled sound again, and Kim’s eyes narrow. Her gaze bores into him, hollowing him out as he tries to stand upright against the gale of it. His breath comes faster—quick, he thinks, quick quick—but he already knows it’s going to sound stupid, already knows it’s always sounded stupid, already knows it’s going to sound like he’s doing it for her or he’s doing it for Chuck or he’s just doing it because there’s nothing else here for him to do.
And what—he’s gonna tell Kim that he’s passionate about defending what’s good, or about telling right from wrong, or about mankind’s greatest goddamn achievement? Some imitation of his brother, or of her. A guy who doesn’t know how to get their respect unless he becomes them—
His pulse knocks against his jaw.
Even if he does force the words out, even then, it’ll only be to finally face the horrible pity that he knows will appear in her eyes, anyway. Sympathetic, caring pity, or whatever it’ll be, as she shows him that becoming a lawyer has almost killed her, shows him this just by existing, shows him that one night of good sex and sleep has barely budged the bags beneath her eyes, barely lifted the pallor in her cheeks.
Barely changed the empty, soft-boned way she stands, glass of water untouched in her hand, waiting to hear his worthless explanation of what he’s been doing these last few months. As if it’ll make a difference.
But he gives one anyway, a metaphorical step forward, inching across the space between them: “I’m…I’ve been going back to school.”
Kim’s face finally shifts now, her eyes widening, and, there it is, the disbelief.
His stomach roils. “Just, you know—community college—” he says quickly, trying to shift her expression—
She holds up her hand.
And he quietens.
“Back to school,” she says, voice measured and flat. “Okay.” And then, eyes still wide with disbelief, she gives a helpless-looking shrug. “Why did you lie to me?”
He shakes his head.
“Jimmy.”
He sighs. “Kim, look at yourself,” he says softly. He runs his hand through the air, down the length of her, then lets it flop again to the countertop with a thud. “You’ve been so busy. Could barely even keep your eyes open most days.” He inhales, waits, then adds: “You didn’t need this on your plate.”
Her eyebrows spike again. “My plate?”
“You would’ve wanted to help—”
“No,” Kim says sharply. “No. Jimmy, stop.”
So he stills. Steadying himself with the counter. He tries to look at her from afar, tries to see them both from afar, desperately searches for that familiar cold remove that lets him watch the jigsaw pieces fall into place. He imagines studying the two of them, facing off across the kitchen, him in yesterday's crumpled button-up, her in an old t-shirt and jeans and bare feet, hair still mussed from sleep. A fist closes in his stomach.
But Kim just sighs. Soft, and precise: “Why did you lie to me, Jimmy?”
Jimmy swallows. His pulse comes thready. He says, weakly, “I didn’t lie to you.”
Kim’s eyes flash. She sets down her glass and steps towards him now. “No? So that marketing proposal for Howard, huh?” Another step closer. “The one you said you were brushing up on the fundamentals for?”
“That wasn’t—you didn’t even really—”
Kim almost flinches. “What?” she says, blinking. “I didn’t really what, Jimmy? I didn’t hear it?”
Jimmy holds up his hands, palms out. “That’s not—” He huffs, and looks down again. Lowers his hands deliberately and presses his hands to the countertop again. Steadying, steadying. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, softly, and he looks back up at Kim.
She raises her eyebrows, expectant. Go on.
“I mean…I was studying up on business stuff. Just, you know, not for Howard. For a class.”
Kim says, tone faux-bright, “Oh, so it’s not a lie, then?”
He swallows, staring at her.
“And all those nights after work, hm?” she continues, giving him a prompting nod.
He can’t say anything; he shakes his head.
“Barbecues at Chuck’s, or—Oh, hey Kim, Rebecca’s asked me around for dinner again, isn’t that great?” Kim says, voice sing-song, almost slipping into his accent. “Jeez, Kim, and you’re just so busy you won’t notice. Hell, I’ll use the same excuse twice!” She steps closer, until her hips bump against the counter, jabbing her hand forward with each point as if searching for his heart. “I tried calling you, Jimmy. Even stopped by once.” She breathes out sharply through her nose, staring up at him, muscles threading the side of her neck. “And the next day, you spouted some bullshit about Thai restaurants. Couldn’t even look at me. But, sure, Jimmy, sure! You never lied to me!”
Jimmy exhales.
“So, wow, yeah, thanks for keeping it off my plate,” she says, waving a hand around. “Thanks so much. Back to school, that’s—why couldn’t you just tell me that?” She gestures violently. “Why? Guess it was so much better for me to keep avoiding it, keep…God, I thought—” She presses her hands to her face now, chest rising and falling. There’s ink stains on her fingers, black and blue. She lowers her hands, stepping back and turning away. Speaks to him obliquely, as if she’s addressing the sink instead. “D’you know, I kept expecting to see you one morning with your arm in a sling?” Her voice is softer now, too. Cautious. “Or a neck brace? Or—or, Jesus, to not see you at all. Just find out from Chuck you were in the hospital—”
A sharp dig in his stomach, and he inhales. “Kim,” he says, quickly, trying to get in, “Kim, I would never—”
“—or even worse, find out that you’d been arrested again, and maybe this time…maybe this time…” She finally looks to him again, her brow is turned down now, and her eyes are filled with pity already. Filled with horrible, disgusted pity. She exhales harshly. “And maybe this time that’d be it,” she says. “No more magic rescues left. No more miraculous big brothers to bend the rules just for you. No more special treatment for Jimmy McGill.”
Jimmy clenches his teeth. He presses his knuckles against the hard countertop. Breathes around the blade that’s appeared between his ribs, cold and hard and unyielding.
Maybe it’s a blade he put there himself. Maybe it’s been there this whole time, trying to cut out that piece of him—trying to hack away at his insides and leave only the clean parts, cauterised and sterile. And all for—what, for this? For his hands, pale and bony, pressed to Kim’s countertop, wrists bare. A year of straight-and-narrow mailroom work, and months of college, months of no sleep and study and bus rides and listening—and still that old skin clings to him.
And everyone still sees it clinging there, still sees it no matter how hard he tries to wash it off. No matter how many hair cuts he gets or new shirts he buys or new words he learns.
And everyone will always see it. Even, apparently—
He looks up, cold. Studies her as she stands before him, with her sleep-dark brow and folded lips. With her shirt tugged on unevenly, the collar wide, left shoulder starting to peek out. With the sharp lines in her neck, on her face. And he finally says, quietly, “I’m just doing what you told me to do, Kim.”
Her eyes cut to him. “What?”
And stronger: “I’m just doing what you told me to do.” He moves, stepping past the counter now, getting closer. “I’m just doing what you wanted. Fitting in around you. Taking what I can get. Never talking about anything.”
She blinks. “I never said that.”
He folds his arms, boxing her in. Lifts his eyebrows expectantly.
“Jimmy,” she says warily.
“You made it pretty damn clear that if I wanted”—he waves a hand between them—“any of this, if I wanted your scraps, I had to bend to fit whatever twisted little gaps you left in your life.”
Kim squares up in front of him. “My scraps?”
“Sure! Little movie here, little sleepover there. Whatever you can spare. Handouts.”
“Jimmy, Jesus,” she says, reeling back. Her eyes are briefly vulnerable, hurt. She shakes her head, slowly, then says, “So you’re blaming me? You lie to me for months and somehow that’s my fault?”
He shrugs, hoping it comes out as casually as he’s aiming for, even as his pulse drums against his neck.
She laughs, ugly and light. “First I’m too busy and now it’s what I secretly wanted? Seriously?”
Another light shrug. It’s hard to keep looking her in the eyes, but he does it anyway, his jaw clenched. He keeps his gaze trained on hers as she slowly shuts hers off, the vulnerability vanishing again. It’s easier to stare with it gone. Like staring at a wall.
Her next words come icy and sharp: “When have I lied to you, Jimmy? Ever?”
He opens his mouth—
But Kim continues, spluttering, “When—hell, Jimmy, when have I ever been anything less than honest about our relationship?”
Relationship? He blinks. “Honest? What!?” A bitter laugh escapes. “You mean never talking about it? Is that what you mean by honest?” He shakes his head, grinning. “God, relationship. What am I to you, anyway? Go on, tell me. Honestly.”
Kim stands before him, suddenly small, her mouth frozen, half open. He’s so close he can see her pulse, can see it strumming along the corded muscles up her neck.
“Yeah, real honest,” he says softly. “Good job, Kim.” He steps away from her now and turns, moving back into the living room. “How many of my clothes are here, huh? And my cereal in the kitchen? My shit in your cabinets? Want me to go grab my razor and toothbrush real quick so you can pretend they haven’t been in there for months?”
“Jimmy.”
He whips around, facing her again.
Kim, who’s been following him, stops.
And he holds out his palms. Gives a long sigh that comes out shakier than he’d hoped. Gestures to the frayed and fraying thing between them. “What is this, Kim?”
She stares at him. She gives no sign she’s even heard, other than her breath coming slightly faster. Slightly more unevenly.
“What are we?” he presses after a moment, softer and more helpless. It kills him how desperate his voice sounds. How it snaps and breaks over the next words: “Give me something. Please. Something more than—friends.”
“Of course we’re more than friends,” Kim says curtly.
“Yeah?” he says, eyebrows up. He can hear the echo of her voice when she introduced him to her professor—my friend, Jimmy—and he sneers. “So what, then? Tell me.”
She’s still frozen, completely motionless, other than her chest rising and falling. Then she swallows. After a long moment, she says, “Jimmy, you already know…”
“Do I?” he says harshly, into the quiet. “Do I? What do I know?”
Her eyes drill into his. It’s just the sound of her breathing. Up and down, in and out.
“Say it,” Jimmy whispers, after a long time. And there’s that desperate voice again, slipping out before he can stop it: “Just say it. Give me something, Kim. Anything.”
The silence stretches long between them. A silence like so many other silences: like Kim with her mouth shut before a chain-link fence; like Kim stroking his chest in bed, brushing away unspoken words; like Kim at a graduation party, quiet beneath the low splashing of a pool. Like knees touching beneath blankets, like Christmas outside his apartment, like voices down phone lines.
Like Kim beside him in the driver’s seat over a year ago, as they returned to the lights of Albuquerque.
And then, finally, she speaks. “What are you even doing here, Jimmy?” she says flatly. “Just going after me so you can win some game? What’s the point?”
He sees the distraction for what it is. He swallows around the acid that rises in his throat, tries to keep it down. Says it gently instead, “Jesus, Kim, you really can’t, can you?”
She closes her eyes. “Jimmy.”
He remembers thinking about his name in her mouth, once. About how with just those two-syllables she could say everything. The hum in the middle, the rising tone at the end.
Hell, maybe he was kidding himself. Maybe it had never meant anything more than his name.
His lips twitch, and he steps forward. “Got nothing, huh?” he says, mocking or desperate or somewhere in between. “Do you…” He exhales sharply, then another step forward. “Do you love me?”
Kim opens her eyes. Long tunnels with only darkness at the end. Long and silent.
He says it again, vulnerable now, “Do you love me, Kim?”
“Don’t do that,” she says, finally. Her voice is cold, so cold. It hits him in the chest.
But Jimmy smiles. “I’ll say it first, if you like,” he says, softly. “Do you want to hear it? I’ll say it right now.”
“Don’t do that, Jimmy,” she whispers. “Don’t you dare.”
He stares into her eyes. There’s nothing there.
She stands before him, quiet and desolate, a long stretch of empty sand.
Like television snow.
Like white noise, drifting.
“Yeah,” he says, throwing down bitter fires now, dark fires between them. “Yeah, and I’m the one lying.” He moves to the coffee table, swipes his notebooks and papers into his backpack and zips it up, the teeth buzzing, then slings it over his shoulder.
Her apartment seems small—small and hollow. He stares toward her bedroom, where there’s a drawer half-filled with some of his clothes, just-in-case. To the bathroom. Then back to her.
His grip tightens on the strap of his bag. “I’ll see you around, Kim.”
She doesn’t look at him as he leaves.
Jimmy drops his backpack to the ground outside her apartment with a thud. A punctuation mark. He leans clumsily back against the wall beside her door, and then slowly slides down it, his knees rising up to frame his head. His breath comes fast.
It’s stupid hot, because of course it is, the midday sun trapped in the square apartment complex like an oven. He knows Kim must’ve heard the heavy sound of his bag landing, knows she must’ve heard the scrape of him sliding down the wall.
He waits for the noise of the lock turning in the door beside him. Waits for the noise of the latch being drawn.
It never comes.
So, in his mind, he goes back inside. He pulls the door open again, and steps through, and tells her the truth—the whole truth, nothing but.
That he’s going to get his degree, that he’s going to take the LSAT and get into law school and graduate just like her, in a red-and-black gown. And sit the bar exam, and climb up from the mailroom and step out onto the upper floors of HHM.
He tells her that this dream feels right, sometimes, when he lets it, in a way he can’t explain. That he can see himself doing it like he’s never seen himself doing anything else. Can see himself getting information out of a witness, can see himself convincing a jury—or, more than that, can actually feel himself doing it, not just imagine some colorful image of himself in the role. That he likes the idea of it.
He tells her that he’s sorry, he tells her that he was just scared.
Then he remembers the disbelief on her face. The horrible, cutting disbelief at the thought of him going back to college. He tips his head back and his skull hits, hard, against the wall. Ripples of pain the spread out from behind his eyes.
And so then, in his mind, he goes inside and he lies some more. Says that she was right, that he’s just been in it for the challenge, just to see if he could crack her defences. Says that he doesn’t know how she can expect him to be honest with her when she’s never honest with him, when she never tells him anything. Says that this whole year of dancing around, of back and forth and push and pull, hasn’t been worth it. Says that seeing her work so hard and so tirelessly without ever expecting it of him, without ever judging him for not doing the same, hasn’t ended up pushing him to match her—
Because he can’t really think of enough lies to make that scenario play out long enough.
He just thinks of that last look on her face, that last dark and burned look.
He stares up at the sky, big and blue as ever, mocking him.
His phone rings while he’s hunting for his useless public speaking notes in his apartment that afternoon, his bangs damp with sweat, clock ticking down to the stupid presentation that’s still approaching this evening.
It’s three rings before he gets to it—sharp and shrill and right to his bones.
He picks up the receiver and waits. Listens intently to the silence on the other end of the line, to his own uneven breaths bouncing back to him.
“…Jimmy?”
“Chuck?” Jimmy says, blinking.
His brother’s voice is sharp. “You’re not in the office.”
Jimmy closes his eyes. Exhales through his nose and wipes his hand over his damp forehead. Christ. “No,” he says. “I took a sick day.”
“Ah,” Chuck says, voice crackling. “Okay.”
And is it just his imagination, or can he hear that creeping doubt in Chuck’s voice now, too? Like it’s infecting everyone. Jimmy grits his teeth, holding the receiver with his shoulder and ear and dragging his backpack up between his knees to hunt through it again, just in case.
“Well, I’ve been looking for you,” Chuck says mildly. “Have you spoken with Mom recently?”
Jimmy blinks again. “Mom?” he says, pulling scrunched up notes from the bottom of the bag. “No, I haven’t.”
“Okay,” Chuck says—and again there’s that almost-tone of disbelief.
Jimmy pauses, paper half unfolded in his hands. “Why?”
A long silence, then crackling: “I should let her tell you.”
“What, Chuck?” he says shortly. Back to the search—still nothing, still nothing. “Tell me what?”
After a long silence, his brother continues, warier, “She had some news from her doctor last month. I’ve been checking in. When I phoned her last night she seemed…agitated.”
Agitated? Jimmy thinks. What is she, a damn cat? Mom can take care of herself. “Okay,” he says, instead. He stills his hands again, dropping the useless sheets of notes to the floor.
“But if you say you haven’t spoken with her…” Chuck adds.
He huffs. “No, I haven’t.”
“Well,” Chuck says, after another beat. “If she calls, just…tread carefully for once, all right, Jimmy?”
Sure, Jimmy thinks, tread carefully. Thanks Chuck. I’ll try not to tell her to go fuck herself then, huh? But he doesn’t say it. He grunts out an agreement and slams down the receiver, then goes back to his search, dragging old notes from six weeks ago out from the mess at the bottom of his backpack, not looking at the borders of them too closely, just glancing once and then tossing them aside.
It’s as hot as ever in the public speaking classroom that evening, the air conditioning working overtime but losing. Jimmy feels like his skin has trapped the sun from outside Kim’s place and now it’s coming off him in waves. Like stored energy.
He licks his lips and looks back down at the bright glass of the overhead projector. “We needed visual aids, so here you go,” he says. He straightens the transparency on the glass, lining it up so the writing is horizontal. Then he turns from the display on the white screen to the other students. “Can you guys read that?”
Professor Reiss, at the front of the group, gives him a gesture—half encouraging, half reproving. Continue. Your time is now.
Jimmy nods and swallows. His throat is dry. He picks up his sheet of speech notes from the table beside him, glances at it once, then puts it down again. Stares out at the group, arranged sporadically around the familiar horseshoe of desks, their expectant faces all trained on him. He blinks, and says, “Uh, lights?”
Sam gets the lights. She widens her eyes to him before she flicks the switch, and then it’s dark.
“Right, well,” Jimmy says, and he turns to look up at the screen.
Looks up at the magnified projection of the transparent foil, where this morning he’d written with brutal optimism in neat bullet points: Get degree; LSATs; Law school; Bar exam; Lawyer.
He clears his throat and looks, quickly, away. “So,” he says, out to the room. “So, when you asked us this back in May, Professor, I was pretty stumped.” He flashes her a grin. “Why are we here? Why am I here?” A shrug. “I mean, hell, I’d just followed the room number on my timetable.”
There’s a soft patter of kind laughter.
Jimmy starts to pace, and he sees himself pass, shadowed, over the bright projection, a flickering darkness over the words. He slows and watches his shadow slow, too. Watches it hide the writing. Get degree; LSATs; Law school; Bar exam; Lawyer.
“Why am I here?” he says again. He lets the silence drag for a moment, and then he steps on again, out of the light, and looks back at the others. “That’s the big question, huh? The sixty-four thousand dollar question?”
Heavy silence. He clears his throat and turns back to the projection. What was the point of it? Visual aid? He was gonna talk about—what? Get degree; LSATs; Law school; Bar exam; Lawyer.
His mouth dries out. He licks his lips, his tongue sticking to the surface. Looks out to the small, cramped room. “So, anyway,” he says. “Here. What is here, right, Professor? That’s what you want? Define the terms. Okay. Here is the Central New Mexico Community College.” He claps once, soft and hollow.
On the screen behind him, the shadow of his clapping hands, fluttering. He claps again, soft, watching the shapes, and then drops his hands, clearing the text. Get degree; LSATs; Law school; Bar exam; Lawyer.
And isn’t that enough? he thinks. The words he couldn’t say earlier. Written up there in sharp black letters. As neat as he could make them. As precise as he could make them. And I finally wrote them down, for God’s sake, isn’t that enough?
He turns back to the group. They stare at him, eyes wide with pity, with a horrible pity, and he feels something stab next to his heart—did he say that bit out loud?
He scans them, quickly, and tries to swallow—
No. His mouth even seems glued shut, now. He’s suffocating, choking, and he forces his mouth open, lips dragging apart. Inhales, catches his breath, then laughs.
“Hah,” he says, scratchy and dry. He wipes his hand over his lips, then over his forehead, brushing aside his bangs. “Hah, look at me up here.” He gives a soft laugh, shaking his head. Sees himself from the outside, standing in front of everyone, sweating. Another weak laugh. “Look at me. It’s like, uh. Optical poptitude!”
Nothing. Someone shifts in their chair.
“Optical poptitude? From Punchline?” he says, into the silence. “No?” He swallows. “Tough crowd.”
He licks his lips again. He wishes he had water. His bangs fall slowly down over his eyes, sweat-damp and thready. He reads over his list on the white screen. Get degree; LSATs; Law school; Bar exam; Lawyer.
And sees the guy standing before them in his white button-up. He’s not Tom Hanks in Punchline at all—he’s Jimmy Stewart before the Senate, filibustering his heart out. Standing there desperate, voice lost, eyes wide.
What had Mr. Smith cared so much about, anyway? Something about Boy Scouts? Boy Scouts and camps and letters? He’d been at it for hours, somehow. With Jean Arthur there, up on the balcony, watching.
Jimmy looks to the window. He runs a hand over his bangs and remembers Kim doing the same thing, trailing her cold fingertip above his eyebrows. Cold with the water he’d splashed there from his glass.
Staring now at the bright sunlight of the campus, the window striped with the shadows of leaves, he can see her clearly, can see her mouthing along with the film: I guess this is just another lost cause…all you people don’t know about lost causes.
He opens his mouth and—
—nothing.
The bright bulb of the projector flares in the corner of his eye. He realizes he’s blocking the light yet again, that he’s stepped back in between it and the screen.
And, at the bottom of his vision, he catches sight himself. He looks down now, really looks down. At yesterday’s white shirt, still creased from Kim’s floor, still creased from the wind and the running and the post-it walls of last night.
And, there across it, his own writing. The careful words of his bullet-point plan, the letters smudged, shifting purple-blue where the Sharpie traced lighter over the plastic. His answer to the big question, laid out over top of him in fragmented words—half of LSAT, the middle of Law school. Some incomprehensible version of Lawyer, rippling over his belt.
And the rest, gone, nothing. Scattered.
He feels a hand touch his shoulder and he jerks.
It’s Professor Reiss. In her oversized brown blazer and humidity-swelled brown bob.
Somebody flicks on the lights, bright and blue above them. Flickering first, then steady.
“James,” Reiss says, quietly, and then, “Jimmy.” When he looks to her, she smiles. “This is a college class, not an interrogation.” She turns off the overhead projector, extinguishing the dark words on his chest. “I don’t want to fail you.”
“No?” he says. He tries for a hoarse laugh. “So—I passed, then?”
She chuckles, but shakes her head slowly. After a thoughtful moment, she gestures to the small group of students. “You know, we were all sorry to miss you at rehearsals last weekend.”
“What?”
Reiss nods sympathetically. “We missed you,” she says, and then she studies him. “Maybe you’re not even over that bug quite yet.”
Jimmy remembers his lie now, with sickly clarity. What had he done instead of going? God, he doesn’t even know. Sat silently beside a studying Kim, probably.
Reiss is still speaking: “…were a big help. I know Ellis here made some major breakthroughs.”
Ellis shoots Jimmy a thumbs up, his thumb poking out from a hole in his sweatshirt.
“But, I think…” and Reiss pauses now, worrying her lips. Then she says, “Let’s just count this one as your rehearsal, huh? Go for a take two?” She stares at him with wide eyes, waiting.
Jimmy croaks, something like, “Okay.” He sits down at the closest desk, heavy and sudden. Laughs to himself, a scratchy, hopeless thing that he can barely hear. Jeez, you’ve really lost it now Jimmy, says the Marco-like voice that always seems to drift into this damn classroom. What happened to the king; what happened to Miles Davis? Forget the trumpet, that was barely even jazz.
“So we’ll fit you in at the end, after Joey next Thursday, maybe?” Reiss is saying. She claps her hands, a sharp and precise sound, then says louder, “And why don’t we call it there for today? I’m sure you guys will all appreciate the extra time to work on your own presentations, huh?” She nods, verdict given. She’s silent for a time, as the others start to slowly pack up their things, then she turns back to him, staring down from her vantage point standing beside his chair. “Jimmy?” she says, and more words he doesn’t catch.
“Hm?” he says.
Her eyes soften. “You got somewhere to go?”
He peers up at her. He realises that, under it all, she’s maybe his own age. Just with her life in order. With a confident voice and an oversized blazer, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows—all these damn Albuquerque natives acting like it’s not a thousand degrees in the shade out there right now, and him sweating through his short sleeved button up.
But, the air con running like ice above him, raising the hairs on his arms, he thinks that maybe it was never that warm in here, after all.
He can still feel the heat rising from his skin, anyway. The heat that’s been radiating off him since Kim’s place. The trapped midday sun.
Jimmy wonders if he should’ve written Reiss’s last question down on the top of his notepad, too: You Got Somewhere to Go? More helpful words to haunt him as he sits here, chair leaning up against the wall in the gap between his bed and his closet, watching the television.
He pops his mouth off the end of his beer bottle. Licks the froth from his top lip.
And he shuts off his thoughts again, like a door closing. Turns the latch and chains it and stares at the screen.
It’s commercials. It feels like it’s been commercials for half an hour now. Half an hour of Wilford Brimley talking about his damn oats. And Jimmy wonders whether they purposefully make the breaks longer and longer toward the end of each show these days. Just dragging out those last few minutes of L.A. Law or whatever the hell it is. Blocking off each scene with ten-minute chunks of mindless ads.
He glances sideways, into the other room. Then looks back to the TV.
Then looks into the other room again.
Light from the window spills into his kitchen, hitting the fridge. It’s mostly a faded, soft light, hazing through his cheap lace blinds, but it’s sharp and bright where he didn’t pull them closed properly earlier. A clean line over the white fridge.
Beneath a hot air balloon magnet, tilted jauntily like it’s stuck in a strong wind, Kim’s damn phone number is still pinned to the door. The torn sheet of paper from the bottom of her legal pad.
He looks away from it again.
The phone is already in his other hand, anyway. Has been in his hand for hours, the cord looping over the bed.
Or has been in his hand since the start of the commercial break, anyway. He looks down at the numbers on the handset for a moment, for a fraction of a moment...
Or for a long time. For the very long time that passes in this eternal cycle of commercials.
The commercials are still rolling when he looks back up at the TV. At least it’s not about oats anymore. It’s some shampoo ad, instead. A woman washes her hair in an outdoor spring. He thinks he’s seen it tonight already. Thinks he’s seen it hundreds of times. He stares at the shifting colors of the blue pool and green trees and the yellow hair—
Without looking, Jimmy thumbs the buttons on his phone, little atonal beeps.
He holds it to his ear as it rings. The sound from the other end of the line is muted—a bell covered in cloth. After four rings, it stops.
But his mother’s voice comes eventually: “Hello?”
He inhales. “Hey Mom,” he murmurs.
“Jimmy,” Ruth says softly. “It’s good to hear from you.” He can hear her own television humming in the background. He wonders if she’s trapped in the same commercial loop as him.
He thinks, Chuck said you weren’t doing so well. Chuck said you should be the one to tell me that. Chuck said, Chuck said…but then he just sighs. “How’re things, Mom? How’re you going?”
“I’m good, hon,” Ruth says softly.
Yeah.
After a while, her voice comes back, light and careful: “And what about you?”
“Good—really good,” he says. He gives a little laugh. “Hot, though! Summer, huh?”
And his mother says, “It’s been hot here, too. Humid. Poor old Dee’s shedding like anything.” She chuckles quietly. “Doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, these days.”
Jimmy scratches at his hair. It’s still ropy and damp. He hasn’t showered. “Yeah, I think she’s on to something, that cat,” he murmurs.
And then silence. He can hear his mother breathing. Can hear himself breathing. And the hum of the crappy air conditioning in his apartment. And the hiss of the line between them.
“Hey Mom,” he says, softly, after a time. He watches the blurred scenery of another commercial. He rubs a hand over his face, burning. “D’you remember that game we used to play?”
A pause, then she says, “Game?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, in the summer holidays. Always the summer holidays. When Marco was off at camp. I’d be sweating away in the store, and you’d come out from the back, and say…man, you’d say something.” He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“I’d say something?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Like a quote.”
And then his mother responds, her voice glimmering. “What a dump.”
Jimmy laughs. “Yeah. That’s it, what is that?”
His mother chuckles, too. “I don’t know, actually,” she says warmly, after a moment. “Elizabeth Taylor used it in Virginia Woolf. Some Bette Davis thing.” She gives another little laugh. “I suppose I was doing Liz doing Bette.”
Jimmy grins.
“What a dump,” she echoes.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, that was it. You’d come out and say that. Then Pop would roll his eyes, and you’d wave him away. But it’s too hot to work, you’d say, so we’d both race out the old Chevy, piling in the front. We’d roll all the windows down, even the back ones, cranking the handles…” He stops for a moment, remembering the smell of the interior, remembering the drone of the tires down the cement. He smiles. “And then we’d play the game.”
“Ah,” his mother says. She inhales sharply. After a second, the television noise stops on her end, sudden quiet.
So Jimmy shuts his set off, too—a high-pitched whine then nothing.
And he tells her what he remembers. He tells her that he remembers driving through Cicero in the middle of the afternoon, the wind rushing through the car, his mother’s hands tight on the brown leather steering wheel. Over Laramie Bridge, or up and down Ogden Ave, cutting diagonally between the horizontal streets.
He wouldn’t look outside on these drives, ever. Instead, he’d be watching the speedometer, watching it slowly creep over the limit. Huddled beside her on the bench seat, peering at the dial, at the needle hovering.
Most drives it never happened, most drives the game would be a bust—but sometimes, every so often, boom. The flash of lights behind them. The blare of a siren.
And his mother would calmly peel off the road. Would calmly slow to a stop.
They weren’t allowed to talk about it beforehand. That was the only rule. His mother would wait, smile ghosting on her face, until the traffic cop was almost beside her door, just inches away, and then she’d wink at Jimmy, and roll down her window and say…
“…Jeez, Mom, what would you say?” Jimmy asks now, leaning back against the cool wall of his apartment, the receiver gripped in his hand. “I can’t even remember any of ‘em.”
And Ruth chuckles down the line. “Oh, you know…just little things. Officer, please, we’re running late for his surprise party. We’re late for his choir recital, it started ten minutes ago. Sing for him, Jimmy, go on, don’t be shy now.”
Jimmy snorts, covering his face.
“Or we’d be looking for a runaway dog—or, you know what, honey, I think we were chasing a rabbit once, from your famous magic act…”
And Jimmy remembers more now, from when he was a bit older, maybe ten or eleven, from when he would take the lead. Bigger and bigger lies each time, lies that he would spring into as the cop approached. Appendicitis, or accidental poisoning, or a broken leg. He remembers clutching his face, pressing his hand to his jaw, his mother’s lips twitching as he writhed around on the seat— “An awful toothache, Officer, just look at him!”
She still got the speeding tickets, sometimes. Maybe too often. Maybe, Jimmy thinks, maybe so often that that’s why they had to quit the game, one day. Why his father had eventually stopped rolling his eyes and started pulling his mother to one side instead, talking in loud whispers that carried across the store. Maybe by then she was risking her license, too.
Jimmy doesn’t ask about this now, on the phone. He just laughs, softly, as his mother recounts more and more of their excuses, more and more until…
Until she sighs.
And they’re both quiet again.
Eventually, there’s a gentle shifting noise, like she’s moving in her chair. Like she’s leaning forward, ready to hang up the phone.
“So, you’re good, Mom?” he says quickly. He can almost hear his voice echoing back to him as he says it, rattling hollow inside the receiver. “You’re doing okay?”
A beat, almost unnoticeable—just the delay of a long distance phone call. “Of course I am, honey,” she says. “Never better.” And again the shifting in her chair. “And you’re keeping together, too? Looking after yourself?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy says.
He doesn’t think about dark numbers on his fridge. He doesn’t think about dark words broken over his chest.
He doesn’t think of the cold hard pit he’s been swallowing since this morning. Doesn’t think of her empty, tunneling eyes as he left. Doesn’t think of the words that he had taunted her with at the end, that he had almost said out loud, finally, bitterly.
And he doesn’t think of the other unspoken words, either. The real answer to her question. The words he couldn’t even figure out how to throw cruelly in her face.
He shuts that door and latches it, again and again, the metal cold and brittle, his fingers weak, forcing it—fucking—shut.
“Yeah, Mom,” he says, soft, so soft. “Yeah, never better.”
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