Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self - By Danielle Evans Page 0,50
a midtown hotel, and reluctantly called a broker about a new apartment.
“I don’t know why you didn’t move a long time ago,” said his ex-wife, Debra, when he called to tell her about it. “It’s a wonder it’s only now falling down. That rat trap was only supposed to be temporary when you moved in twenty years ago.”
“Twenty years ago, I was still under the impression that our marriage was not supposed to be temporary,” he snapped back. “Besides, welcome to the new Harlem. I’ve lived here so long that everyone wants to live in my neighborhood again.”
“Not without roofs, they don’t,” said Debra, and after a week of stubborn resistance to everything the broker showed him, William was forced to concede the point.
Two weeks after her father’s roof fell in, Eva woke up to the blaring alarm of her cell phone, reminding her of the lunch date she’d programmed into her phone a few days earlier. She blinked at a crack in the ceiling, momentarily worried that her own roof was caving in out of solidarity, before rubbing the sleep from her eyes. It was not her ceiling she was looking at, she realized. It was not her bed that she was in, and it hadn’t been her apartment in over a year. Cheese was still asleep, and though it occurred to her to wake him so he wouldn’t be late for his shift at the coffee shop, she tiptoed to the shower instead, hoping to be ready to leave by the time he woke up so they wouldn’t have to talk about what she was doing there for the third time this week. After a few minutes of futilely turning the shower dials in search of heat or water pressure, Eva stumbled out smelling like another woman’s grapefruit and lily soap. Her damp curls made her grateful, at least, that she hadn’t bothered straightening her hair for her father’s benefit.
After fumbling through her backpack for something that wasn’t dirty, flecked with clay from her studio, or otherwise likely to offend her father, she gave up. Eva started on Cheese’s wardrobe, looking for something that didn’t scream that she’d spent the night at her ex-boyfriend’s apartment. When that didn’t work, she reminded herself that Cheese’s current girlfriend was in another state, ostensibly working up the energy to break up with him, and went through what was left on the girlfriend’s side of the closet, finally finding a button-down dress that was clean and high-collared and respectable. She noted, with equal parts contempt and admiration, that Cheese’s latest girlfriend was the sort of girl who ironed and kept things creased where they were supposed to be. She noted also, while buttoning, how easily the dress slipped over her hips. There had been a note of genuine concern in Cheese’s voice when he pointed out how thin she’d gotten and asked her if she was still eating OK. She told him that she was, a mostly honest answer: she was eating less lately only because living alone made the awkwardness of keeping to regular mealtimes almost unbearable. The soft worry of his voice when he’d asked was at odds with the present. Cheese, now awake, was demanding to know why Eva was wearing Kate’s dress.
“Oh, come on,” she said, turning around to stare pointedly at his bare chest above the white bedsheet, the faint red tooth marks she’d left beneath his collarbone last night.
“You can’t take her dress,” he said.
“I’m not taking it, I’m borrowing. And I’m running late. You can yell at me later.”
“Is there going to be a later?” he asked. He climbed out of bed, stopping to pick up the armful of bangle bracelets she’d left on the nightstand and hand them to her. “And what are you in such a hurry for, anyway? I thought you said your dad was always late.”
It was true, she had said that. Her father was never where he said he’d be when he said he’d be there. When she was small, she would wait on her mother’s kitchen windowsill for hours on visiting days, nose pressed against the glass. Her mother would linger in the kitchen looking disapproving, reminding her that it could be hours. It was before everyone carried a cell phone and was always and every minute reachable, and even now Eva hesitated to call her father when she couldn’t find him. She preferred when he materialized without preface. Back then she’d leave the windowsill before he arrived, partly