Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,32
streaks sizzling up between all the still-standing buildings. She became aware that she was crying, and had been crying for a while. The crying was for Dylan at first, but as it continued, it became for everyone dead, for everyone who’d lost someone, and for herself, for how empty the rest of her life would be.
* * *
She spent that day in bed. She wasn’t hungry or thirsty, and she wasn’t even bored, she just lay there and stared at the ceiling, feeling pinned to the bed by an ache in her chest that radiated outward, weighing down all her limbs and keeping her immobilized. She didn’t know where Callie was. It had been dark for a long time when Laura heard her stumbling into the apartment in her tall chunky boots, and then she also heard a male voice—not Davey’s—mumbling something drunk and inaudible before the door to Callie’s room closed firmly. Laura got up and went to the kitchen. Her stomach felt painfully empty, like its dry walls were clenched together in a knot. She got a packet of ramen out of the cupboard and ate it dry, with the seasoning packet sprinkled on top, and drank a glass of tap water standing up by the sink. Then she went back to bed and lay down and fell fast asleep. When she woke up it was 9:00 a.m., a normal time to get up and start the day, so she did.
Third Street was empty, but that wasn’t so unusual for this hour. The Hells Angels had strung an American flag between their building and the one across the street somehow; it hung down toward the center of the street, drooping rather than blowing in the wind. Laura bought an egg sandwich and a light and sweet bodega coffee on her way to the F train as though she were a commuter on her way to work somewhere. She had no idea where she was going, but it seemed important to be going somewhere.
The subway stopped in the tunnel between Fourth Street and Fourteenth Street for a blood-chilling minute and then started again. People chatted with each other and read the Post over each other’s shoulders and talked about the headlines. The sudden familiarity was horrible but wonderful, and Laura almost wished she could participate in it. She felt tears threatening the Wet n Wild pencil she’d stupidly applied, and a woman sitting across the aisle caught her gaze and said, “You okay, dear?”
It felt fraudulent to get this sympathy; no terrorists had robbed her of her boyfriend. He’d done it himself, by being drunk and high and stupid, or worse, wanting to die. He’d put her in the terrible position of feeling like she didn’t deserve this stranger’s kindness and resenting it because of how guilty it made her feel to be getting it anyway. And she could never tell him how angry she was; he would never have to pay for his crime against himself. She hated him and ached to be near him. She tried to distract herself by looking at the subway map above the woman’s head and found herself devising a plan.
In the months she had lived in New York City she had not yet once been to a cultural institution, unless she counted Brownies. No operas, no public lectures at Cooper Union, no museums. She had never been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in her life, only read about it in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler in grade school. That book had left an indelible impression, though. Now, in the echoing lobby full of kids and families, Laura looked at a paper map and tried to find the French king’s bed those fictional kids had slept in. They had spent a lot of time looking at ancient Egyptian things, too, and had swum in a fountain where they also collected change to pay for their next meal. The museum smelled like cool clean marble and burnt coffee and soup; she was hungry again, probably from not eating all day yesterday. She followed the smell of the food to the ground floor, where there was a crowded, fluorescent-lit cafeteria, serving all kinds of gross food for outlandish tourist prices. She picked out a flaccid bagel stuffed with an inch of cream cheese, paid for it, and took her tray to a corner of the room. The bagel’s skin was pliant, not crunchy, and her teeth slid through the giant