stubble. I looked down. I was still dressed, zipper zipped, buttons almost all buttoned. The boa was still around my neck. “He’s picking me up at the dorm.”
“I’ll give you a ride.” Her voice was much calmer than mine. She gave me a worried look. “To be honest with you, Veronica, that’s uh…that’s not what I thought you were saying ‘Oh no’ about.” She reached into the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out a small piece of paper. “Clyde asked me to give you his number.”
I didn’t take the number from her. She let it fall to the bed. I brought my knees up and pressed my face into my coat. I wanted to go down into the wool, so dark and soft, to somehow crawl inside the material. “What happened?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you.”
She was laughing. I didn’t laugh, and she stopped.
“Nothing happened,” she said. “He came downstairs and told me you fell asleep. I think you hurt his feelings. Think of it.” She leaned over and lightly punched my shoulder. “Third Floor Clyde. Mr. Beautiful. You hurt his feelings. You’ll be famous for this.”
I looked up. “People saw?”
She nodded slowly, eyebrows raised.
I looked away. I already knew all this. I hadn’t been that drunk. But I had no other explanation. What had seemed a rational and sensible action the night before no longer seemed rational or sensible at all. I stared up at one of Jimmy’s framed paintings, a watercolor of a severed hand.
“I’ll make coffee,” Gretchen said, already starting down the stairs. “Take a shower if you want. But prepare yourself. We’ve got some cleaning to do.”
I tried to stand, but the air around me smelled like stale beer, and my stomach lurched until I sat down. I reached for my phone and checked my messages. The first was from my mother.
“I am trying to apologize.” Her voice was hoarse, and she paused to sniff. “I talked with Elise. I am very angry at myself for hanging up on you yesterday. If you want to punish me, that’s fine. But get it over with, Veronica. Okay? Answer your phone.”
People have always said my mother and I sound exactly alike on the phone. I didn’t think we sounded the same. I certainly didn’t want to sound as whiny and shaky as she did now. But when I lived at home, we confused people. Even my father had been fooled sometimes, calling from the office to say he would be working late.
I erased the message, pressing the button harder than I had to.
Tim had left a message just after midnight. He was out at a bar with the younger faction of his extended family. Chicago was freezing, he said. He’d heard we’d gotten some bad weather, too, and he wanted me to call to let him know the drive to the airport had gone okay.
I was sitting cross-legged on the bed, my shoulders rolled forward, my phone a few inches from my ear. I looked up and caught a glimpse of myself in Jimmy Liff’s framed mirror. I looked stupid. Literally. My mouth was open, and my eyes were dazed. I was a stupid person, perhaps, not just with chemistry but with life in general. At the very least, I was a person who did stupid things, despite all my anxious intentions and fear.
The last message was my mother again. She’d called again early in the morning. She no longer sounded like she was crying.
“Veronica,” she said. “People make mistakes.” There was such a long pause I thought the message was over. It wasn’t. “I am still your mother,” she added, exactly three times, like a mantra she was chanting to herself.
Within half an hour, I was showered and redressed, still a little bleary, but pretty much presentable, my hair pulled back in a perky ponytail that I hoped would make me feel perky as well. But after a quick tour of the downstairs, I didn’t feel perky at all. Gretchen was right: the town house was in bad shape. Cans and bottles and plastic cups rested on every horizontal surface. A large plant had been overturned on the stairway. And there was trouble in the kitchen: Gretchen had tried to clean the stainless steel counters in the kitchen with a spray she’d found under the bathroom sink, and a thick, streaky residue stretched between the oven and the espresso maker. Most worrisome was the blood from Gretchen’s finger that had somehow gotten on