Stewart and Jean (3 page)

“You were looking at me, ma’am,” he said, as if she were crazy.

“That’s right, you were, Miss,” said the Jamaican manager, whom she’d totally forgotten about even though he’d been standing right next to Stewart the whole time.

“This is between me and him,” said Marissa. Which actually wasn’t true, it was between him and Jean, but that didn’t occur to her right now.

“So handle it after he gets off work, please,” said the manager.

“I’ve never even seen this girl before,” the guy Stewart told his boss.

That was true, he had no way of knowing who she was. But, again, his whole scheme struck her as so egregious that it seemed he simply had to know what she was mad about; if someone walked to him and was angry, surely he had to say to himself,
Maybe they’re angry about the shitty thing I’m doing.
So it was with outrage at his dishonesty that she said, “You know good and well why I’m here.”

“Not really,” he said. Before she could lash out at him, he added, “Are you friends with Jean or something?,” thereby proving her point, that he’d known all along what she was riled about.

“Yes,” she said. “What makes you think you can come around and harass people?”

“I’m not harassing anybody. I’m just working here.”

“What is she talking about?” asked the manager. “Harassing who?”

“That girl from earlier,” Stewart told him, “the one who stepped on the book.”

That was all the manager needed to hear: “All right, ma’am, I think this is something you and Stewart can discuss after his shift.”

“Don’t you want to know what kind of person you’ve got working here?”

“Not especially.”

Before she could retort, Stewart cut her off. Glaring at her, he demanded, “
I’d
like to know. What kind of person?” His voice had risen along with hers and people were watching them now. Customers who had been hidden among the shelves were wandering to the front of the store to see what was going on. “Huh? What kind? Tell us, what kind?”

It was on the tip of Marissa’s tongue to reply, “A rapist.” She was glad she stopped herself, because of course that wasn’t true. He was the brother of a rapist, but that wasn’t at all the same thing. She nearly started talking loudly about what he was doing, harassing Jean with his mere presence if nothing else, but explaining it might be tricky—she didn’t want to sound like she was mad at him because his brother had been shot. Moreover, she’d have to reveal that Jean had shot a guy, and since that was private information she ought to consult her friend first.

Which meant she was stuck, seething under his glare, unable to respond to it. What with the righteous anger painted over his face, anyone casually watching would have thought he was the wronged party, he played it so well.

“You know good and well,” was all she said.

He said, “Anything I know, I’m not afraid for you to say in front of these people.”

“Yeah, well.” The realization of how little she could say had not only galled her, it had also put her in a state of high anxiety as she tried to figure out how she was going to extricate herself from this scene with dignity. The options were limited. Finally, she said, “We’ll be watching you,” which she knew sounded stupid even as she said it, and she spun on her heel to leave.

Behind her, Stewart called, “Thanks, ma’am, be sure to come again.”

Dan, the owner, had heard the commotion from his office, and apparently having no stronger distraction at the moment called Stewart up there to interrogate him.

This was Stewart’s first time in the office since he’d been hired three days ago, the day after his date with Jean. It was fairly organized but not exactly neat: it was too lived-in for that, constantly in the middle of being used by a busy man.

Stewart found Dan kind of intimidating. With his big unblinking eyes, his grizzled graying beard, his wiry short frame taut in his jogging shorts with T-shirt tucked in, he struck Stewart as a real New Yorker.

“So what the hell was all that down there?” demanded Dan.

Still fresh off the bus from Arkansas, Stewart felt from Dan’s tone that they were on the verge of a fistfight. “I never saw that girl before,” he said, maintaining an appearance of calm.

Dan turned his head so that he was looking at Stewart out of the corners of his eyes, wary of this obvious bullshit. “So you have no idea who that girl was? She just came in here out of the blue and started yelling at you, and you didn’t do anything at all to provoke it?”

“I never saw her before, but she’s friends with a girl I know.”

“Well, how do you know this other girl?”

That was a complicated question. But Dan was losing patience, so Stewart said, “We went on a date.” It was kind of a lie, but at least it was true.

Like Stewart had flipped a switch, Dan sat back and said “Oh.” He relaxed into his chair, all of a sudden twenty percent less intense. He nodded. “Gotcha.”

“It wasn’t, like, a serious thing....”

“Hey, hey, I understand. Women. Only, try not to bring your personal business around the store. Okay?”

“Sure. But, I mean, if she does come by again, I can’t really stop her....”

“Hey, Stewart, I told you—I understand. Just do your best, all right? That’s all anybody can do.”

As he sent him back down onto the floor, Dan clapped him on the shoulder. Stewart almost felt like he was going to get a promotion.

Back downstairs, Stewart retook his place at the register. Peter, the manager, looked at him curiously, but when Stewart’s shrug indicated he wasn’t interested in discussing it, Peter nodded and asked him to go out on the floor and do some shelving.

Charles was shelving too, somewhat lackadaisically, and he let himself go almost into a trance as he watched Stewart. Charles had been hired only the week before, and so took an interest in his fellow newbie. Plus Stewart was from Arkansas. On the one hand, that seemed moderately exotic; on the other hand, Charles himself was from Spokane, which was not exactly cosmopolitan, either. And though he’d been in New York nearly two and a half years he still felt like a new arrival.

Even though there were still books on the cart he’d been assigned, Charles went to help Stewart with his. He timed it so that he and Stewart stepped up to the cart at the same moment. “Hey,” he said.

Stewart barely glanced at him, a look that suggested it was weird for Charles to be talking to him when they had all this work. “Hey,” he said, and walked off with a stack of books, not pausing to chat.

Charles worked on his own cart until he was able to again time a simultaneous arrival at Stewart’s. “So,” he said quickly, before Stewart could escape, “can I ask you something? What was all that, earlier? With that girl?”

“Just some crazy person.”

“Really? I mean, do you know her, or...?”

“Listen, I don’t want Dan to come out and see me yakking on the clock, what with me being new and having been involved in that big scene earlier.”

“Oh, sure, sure. I mean, I’m new, too, so....”

They each went back to working on their own carts. Even though Stewart’s was more difficult—there were fewer copies of each book, and books from all over the store, which meant he had to run all over and hunt for the right spot on the shelf, whereas all Charles’s books were from General Fiction and, while he had about the same number of volumes, he had only about half as many titles—despite that, Stewart finished and went back to refill his cart well before Charles. That made Charles slightly uneasy. He’d been telling himself it was okay that he was slower than everyone else, since he was still new, but Stewart was a week newer than him. Of course, there had been those few minutes when Charles had been helping with Stewart’s cart, instead of doing his own.

It was too bad that skinny girl was supposedly crazy, because she’d also been hot, with her complicated red hair and big green eyes and smart black suit. Given the apparent relationship between her and Stewart, it seemed unlikely that Stewart would introduce them.

The next day Jean didn’t come to work. She and Marissa had never hung out before, but when she’d left the other day she’d given Marissa her number, so Marissa could call and warn her if Stewart left the store at the same time. Marissa debated with herself whether or not to call her to check if she was all right, but regretfully concluded that they didn’t know each other well enough for it to be her business.

She decided to take her mind off that drama. There would be time to talk about it later, if Jean wanted. Anyway, work was busy. By the time lunch rolled around, she was ready for a break.

In sunny Bryant Park she sat munching her salad and watching about a hundred people doing the free yoga class in the central field. It was a beginner’s class. In the back few rows there were some hopeless cases. There was a fat girl attempting a downward-dog, who looked like a bowling ball trying to fold itself.

She became aware of a guy’s approach. Scruffy but reasonable hair, a blue
Great Gatsby
T-shirt, tan cargo pants. Not uncute. He was approaching her cautiously, as if he didn’t want to scare her off, and with some definite intention.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello,” she said.

“Do you mind if I talk to you a minute?”

“Sorry, I don’t want to, uh....”

“No, I just, um.... I mean, it’s totally none of my business, but it’s just, I know Stewart, and, uh … I guess I’m just curious.”

Marissa frowned. “Stewart?”

“The guy at Temple. Who you yelled at.”

“Oh.” She thought back. “I don’t think I
yelled
at him.”

“No, well, I mean, you know.”

Marissa eyed the guy with a hint of disapproval. “And so you’re friends with him?”

“No, not really.” Inside, Charles laughed wryly and silently at himself—he would betray any man for even the hint of the ghost of the dream of the chance for pussy. “I mean, I don’t know any reason
not
to be friends with him, yet. I only met him a couple days ago.”

Marissa finally realized that the guy was not here to defend Stewart, but to get the dirt on him. Bursting as she was to talk about it, she all but rubbed her palms together as she launched into the story. Charles nearly asked if he could sit with her, but stopped himself and simply sat at the table as if his right to do so were a given; that was a tip from
Secrets of the Pick-Up Artist
, which they’d been flipping through the other day at Temple. Though they’d been going through it as a joke and laughing at it, every once in a while it gave advice that seemed not bad.

The thing with Stewart and Jean was kind of an amazing story. Rather, Marissa didn’t know enough to make it a story, really—it was more like a fascinating accusation. When she was done, Charles said, “Oh my God.” He let it sink in a moment, then said, “So, you really think that’s why he moved to New York?”

“Why else?”

Charles thought of Spokane. “Well, there are lots of reasons someone might want to leave home and move to New York.”

“But then to sneak his way into a date with the girl his brother tried to rape?! And to just happen to get a job in the same building as her, out of the thousands of places to work in New York?!”

“Yeah, that is pretty fucked up.” Charles paused, thinking over his next words, not wanting to give the impression of being on a different side of the conflict than her, but not yet ready to completely subscribe to the view that Stewart was a psychopath. “But, you know,” he finally began, slowly, and apologetically, “she did kill his brother. I’m not trying to say she shouldn’t’ve, or that that excuses Stewart. All I’m saying is, you know, he maybe has some issues to work through that are legitimate.”

“Yes,” conceded Marissa, hiding the uneasiness she felt at having blabbed Jean’s secret. “But either way, I don’t think it’s exactly good for Jean that he’s here, you know?”

“Oh, no, of course not.”

“Even if he does have legitimate cause to feel upset, Jean’s still the real victim.”

“Totally. All I meant was, maybe he would listen to reason, if someone explained it to him the right way, made him understand what he’s doing and just how, you know, inappropriate it is.” His eyebrows drew together and his mouth twisted up as he uttered a phrase made ridiculous by its inclusion in a hundred thousand movies: “Do you think he’s after, like, revenge?”

“I don’t know,” Marissa said, her eyes misty, as if transported to another realm by the sound of that non-quotidian word. “Maybe.”

Charles squinted into empty space, distracted from the hot girl he was talking to. Was Stewart going to do something to Jean? Inflict violence upon her? On the one hand, that was definitely a paranoid notion. On the other other hand, this was definitely the kind of thing people did commit violence over. And getting a job in her building and taking her out on a date was plainly a form of passive, psychological violence. If he really was going to be indefinitely lurking beneath her office, how could she do anything but quit? Who could tough
that
out? But what guarantee was there he wouldn’t find some perfectly good reason to be near her next job? Or apartment? Or both? “I mean, there’s no way to call the cops on him, is there?”

“It seems like there should be, but when I think it over I don’t see how.”

Charles was relieved, because his own question had thrown him into a mild, quasi-panic. It all sounded very fucked up, but he still would hate to casually get the guy arrested. “Well, I’ll talk to him.”

“Yeah? About this?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll feel it out. Discreetly—I won’t tell him about this talk we just had. It’ll be kind of natural for me to strike up conversations with him, since we’re both newbies at Temple.”

“Oh, yeah?”

She said it with enough genuine interest that Charles was able to finally divert the conversation from Stewart to himself. He told her how he was from Spokane, how he’d moved here to get his MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence. “Oh, you’re a writer!” she exclaimed. He modestly confirmed that he was. “That’s cool,” she said. She asked where he’d done his undergrad—Spokane, he told her—she asked if he’d gone to Sarah Lawrence right after getting his BA—nah, he’d futzed around a while first, wandering around Spokane trying to figure out how to get out of there. Now, he joked, he was just waiting to become rich and famous so he could pay off his student loans. She said she was sure he would, and asked if he was working on anything now. He told her he was, though it was still in the “planning phase.”