Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,44
watched, mesmerized. Laura tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice as she announced, “Seven hundred and ten!” at the end of the last sheaf of bills. She hurriedly shoved them back into her purse before Marie could grab them.
As if on cue, there was a knock at the door. Laura shivered with a combination of feverishness and dread. Even when she hadn’t done anything wrong, she still hated interacting with Sean, her landlord, who had the mien of a feudal lord visiting his serf’s hovel. The smell of his mentholated cologne would linger for hours, even if she didn’t let him sit down and get it on any of her furniture. This building, like most of the ones on her block, belonged to his family; this one was “his” to manage and maintain. He was blond with no eyebrows and always wore a Yankees cap, even in winter. Even though he couldn’t have been that much older than Laura, he oozed smug superiority, the contempt that city people feel for tourists. She wished that she’d had time to look harder for a place when she was pregnant, but it had become clear to her a little bit late in the game that having a baby and continuing to live in Callie’s East Village living room was a terrible idea, and she’d taken the first livable, theoretically affordable Brooklyn apartment that she’d seen. She’d been thinking of space for Marie and proximity to other people who had babies, even if she didn’t know them yet. She hadn’t thought about having to deal with someone like Sean. On Third Street, she and Callie had paid their rent by mailing checks to a PO box, which was only stressful because they had to remember to do it on time or else risk a sternly worded form letter and a fifteen-dollar fine. She had never paid Sean late or been short on the rent before, but he’d always counted it in front of her while leering at her milk-swollen boobs in a way that dared her to say something. In the context of Bar Lafitte, she would have laughed off a skinny, obviously powerless goon. In the context of the interior of her own apartment, it was less easy to do so.
“I’m forty dollars short, but I’ll get it to you tomorrow,” she said as she handed him the cash. “Also, Marie and I have the stomach flu, so …” She made a shooing gesture with her hands. “We’re super contagious, I’m pretty sure.”
Sean seemed unfazed. “I have a great immune system. You really can’t be late with the rent, Laura, I don’t recommend doing that around here.”
Laura shrugged. “Sorry. Tomorrow. Okay, see you then!” She waited for him to move toward the door. Instead, he counted the handful of bills she’d given him, arriving at the same number she just had but much more slowly and not out loud. Marie peered curiously up at him and flapped a hand, waving and smiling.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said to her, and as Marie laughed and smiled, Sean bent down as if to pick her up or touch her. Laura’s entire body clenched with hatred that, for the moment, overpowered her flu-ish weakness. She couldn’t stop herself from bending to snatch Marie and move away from Sean.
“Chill out, sweetheart, I’m just trying to be nice here,” he said.
“I just really wouldn’t want you getting sick,” said Laura through clenched teeth. They stared each other down for a long beat, and Laura felt her face twitch with the effort of maintaining her strained mirthless smile. Then Sean turned and walked out the door, and Laura shut it behind him. She exhaled slowly as she heard him knocking on the next door down the hall.
This surge of adrenaline carried Laura through till the end of Marie’s day, keeping her upright as she dosed an increasingly cranky baby with bright pink liquid Tylenol, fed her some applesauce and yogurt that she managed to keep down, and gave her a more thorough bath than the slapdash emergency shower she’d taken midday. They lay in bed together, and Laura read the stupid penguin book and nursed Marie to sleep and put her down in her crib. Almost as soon as Marie was sound asleep, Laura’s body realized it was allowed to collapse and she found herself hovering over the toilet again, vomiting even though she hadn’t had anything but water in hours. The sheer force of her heaves reminded her