The Cubicle Next Door (7 page)

Grandmother frowned at me. “We know how to play poker too. That’s what we played in the early days.” The Early Days meant the 1960s, when their kids were graduating from high school.

“Joe can’t play.”

“Don’t be rude. Of course he can.”

Joe was casting long glances at both Grandmother and me. He cleared his throat. “I don’t have to stay. All I wanted was a ladder. I’m painting my living room. I should probably go, anyway.”

I braced my hands against the table and stood on tiptoe, speaking toward his ear. “It might be better. They’ve been playing bridge on Wednesday nights for years.”

Thelma rapped my knuckles with a deck of cards. “Don’t talk about us like we’re not here. Joe stays.”

“Ouch!” Well, that was that. When Thelma made up her mind, she made a mule seem even-tempered.

Betty was pulling a dining room chair through the front entry. She was bent nearly in half, grasping it by the seat.

“Let me do that for you!” Joe was beside her in two seconds. He set the chair down on all four legs and then took Betty’s hand to help her regain her posture.

Faker! Her eyelashes fluttered and she placed an unsteady hand over her heart. “Thank you, Joe. You’re so strong.”

I didn’t need that. I walked out of the living room and had almost rounded the corner to the stairs when Grandmother’s voice stopped me. “Jackie? Aren’t you going to play?”

I kept climbing the stairs. “No, thank you. Not tonight.”

“Joe needs the ladder.”

“Call me when you’re done and I’ll get it for him.”

They did better than that. They sent him up to find me two hours later.

“Knock, knock.”

If people aren’t going to go to the trouble to knock on a door, then why do they say the words? It’s one of those questions I’ll ask when I get to heaven. If I don’t kill Joe first and get disqualified.

“Yes?”

“Do you mind getting me the ladder? I really do need it.”

I turned from the computer to look at him. He was standing with one arm propped above his head against the doorframe. He looked tired.

“Did they give you a hard time?’

“They beat me. Took me for fifty dollars!”

“Good for them.” Maybe he wouldn’t come around again. I pushed my chair away from the computer, rose to my feet, and looked around for some shoes. I opened the closet, picked up the closest pair of Converse I saw, and shoved my feet into them.

When I turned around I saw Joe, still standing in the doorway, casting nosy glances around my room. I marched past him, closed the door, and trotted down the stairs. I was in the kitchen before I realized he wasn’t behind me. I retraced my steps and found him in the living room, saying his goodbyes.

Adele was counting the money she had won. “You’ll have to come next Wednesday. You might be able to win your money back.”

“Only if I can sit next to you again.”

Grandmother stopped Joe as he turned to leave. “Do you have our phone number?”

He shook his head.

Grandmother wrote it on the tally sheet and then handed it to him. “Call if you can’t make it.”

Joe took the piece of paper, folded it, and tucked it into his wallet. “I’ll put it on my calendar. Wednesday night with the card sharks.”

They all giggled.

Honestly! How do you like that? They’d switched from bridge to poker. And I’d been replaced. They’d gotten a permanent substitute for their substitute.

He raised a hand. “Goodnight.”

We walked through the kitchen and out the back door. There was a suggestion of stillness in the air. Night was settling around us. “Does your house have air-conditioning?”

“No.”

“Do you have any fans?”

“Not yet.”

Couldn’t he do anything for himself? “Just a minute.” I went into the house, unplugged the fan from the living room and started carrying it away.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Grandmother used to add “young lady” to questions like those.

“Joe doesn’t have any fans for his house yet.”

Choruses of “poor boy” followed me back to the kitchen. They probably would have run out and gotten him a snowmaker if they’d had the means.

Joe was sitting on the back steps. I almost tripped over him.

He stood up and put a hand to my elbow to steady me.

I held the fan out between us. It wasn’t a very big one, and it was at least 15 years old, but it was something.

Moonlight made his face glow. “Thanks. I’ll return it to you as soon as I can get my own.”

He put his hands out to take it from me, but they clasped around my own. I tried to move mine, he tried to move his, the fan teetered in the middle.

“Just let me carry it.” I clutched it to my body.

“I can—”

I was already moving down the path toward the street.

Joe caught up with me while I was unlocking the garage. He stood right next to me, blocking the moonlight.

I fumbled with the key. “Do you mind?”

“No door opener?”

“Yes. It’s called Jackie.”

“Here. Let me.”

He took the key from my hand, unlocked the door, and pushed it up.

I pointed to the ladder.

He pried it away from the wall without bumping the car. “Can you do without it until next week?”

“No hurry.” I held out the fan. “Do you have enough hands for this?”

He hooked his arm through the ladder, hefted it to his shoulder, and then took the fan from me. “No problem. Thanks.”

I stood there, watching him for a moment as he clanked down the street.

Seven

T
he ladies were standing in the kitchen arguing when I got back. It sounded bad, but it’s only because they had to shout to make sure the others would hear them. They were arguing about me.

“She wasn’t rude. She was shy.” I could always count on Adele to stick up for me.

“Shy people don’t say anything. She said things.” And I could always count on Thelma to think the worst about me.

“So she said things. She’s the one who lives here.”

“She works with him all day. She knows him better than we do. Maybe she just doesn’t like him.” And Grandmother was rational, if nothing else.

“She likes him. I know how it is. She’s sexually frustrated.”

“I’m what!” I don’t know why I was surprised at that statement. Betty always turned everything into something about sex.

They scattered like a flock of pigeons. A flock of very slow-moving pigeons.

Adele laid a hand on my arm. “We’re concerned about you.”

“Why?”

She exchanged glances with the other women.

“Why?”

“We just think it’s time you found a man.”

“Really.”

“You are over thirty.”

“And you’re getting snappish.”

“And chewing ice cubes.”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

Betty squeezed my arm and whispered in a loud voice, “Chewing ice cubes means you’re sexually frustrated, dear. It’s okay. We’ve all been there.” See? Everything into something about sex.

It was surreal. Getting advice on my love life from octogenarians! “I’ve always chewed ice cubes.”

“I know.” Betty’s eyes blinked wide. “And you’ve never been with a man, have you?”

They were all staring at me.

“Have you?” Grandmother was the only one who looked as if she didn’t want to hear the answer to the question.

“No.”

“See, that’s the problem. You should stop yelling at him, dear. He might start thinking you don’t like him.”

“But I don’t!” Was this so difficult a concept to grasp?

“Of course you do.”

“Of course I don’t.”

“Playing hard to get is fine for the young, but you don’t have the luxury of youth, do you?”

Thank you, Betty. “Are you trying to marry me off?”

“Would it be so bad?”

“I’m perfectly happy on my own.”

“No, you’re not.” Just because she wanted someone, she assumed everyone else did too.

“So you want me to throw myself on someone I’ve barely even met?”

They all stared at me.

“You do? Why?”

“Because you need someone, dear.”

“Listen, I know this concept is foreign to your generation, but modern women don’t need anyone. It’s perfectly acceptable to go through life on your own these days.”

They were shaking their heads. “But not for you.”

I decided to play along, hoping it would allow me to get to bed earlier. Better yet, maybe I could shock them and they’d all just go home. “So what do you want me to do, sleep with him?”

“Yes. Well…maybe not. But you could at least make him think you want to.”

If I hadn’t loved her fuzzy head so much, I’d have strangled Adele. “What! You’re supposed to be a moral example. And you want me to hop in someone’s bed? Just like that?”

“We went through the war years.”

“You mean the old ‘sleep with me, I might die tomorrow’ line works?”

“Only when you wanted it to.”

I really, really hadn’t wanted to know that about Adele.

“You just never knew which boys wouldn’t be coming home. And sometimes, it wasn’t practical to get married before they left…such a lot of good boys never came home…” You could tell Betty was flipping through her mental scrapbook of wartime flings.

“He’s a nice boy and he likes you. Help him out a little.” Adele patted me on the arm. “You can do that, can’t you?”

He likes me? Really? “Did he say that?”

“We’re not blind. Yet.” Thelma always told the truth, no matter what. Tanks had eyes in the back of their heads. And turrets. I knew from experience.

Adele gave me a quick hug and a kiss. “Just think about it.”

I went upstairs and got ready for bed. Joe’s scent still lingered in the hall. Exactly how long had he stood there watching me before he’d bothered to “knock”? Just the thought gave me a funny feeling in my stomach. I stood there in the doorway, trying to see what he must have seen.

My bedspread from India, bought at a time when I was thinking charitable thoughts about my mother. Old challis shawls from a thrift store made into curtains.

The floor-to-ceiling gilt mirror I’d rescued from a dumpster behind an old boarding house. The frame was beautiful, but the mirror was useless, clouded with spots and streaks.

My prized
Bride and Prejudice
poster.

I’m a Bollywood fan. Along with millions of other people in the world. It’s amazing to me that an Indian movie industry which produces more films and sells more tickets than Hollywood is still so unknown in the U.S.

I watched my first Bollywood movie just to see what it was like where my mother was living. Granted, after the first 15 minutes I knew it was an idealistic picture of India, but it had the illusion of the reality of daydreams. An Indian’s daydreams. So it
was
India just the same. And gazing at the images swirling in front of me, I could believe my mother believed she was living in a better place than here. A world filled with family who cared enough to try to control your life. A family who loved you enough to feel as though they had a stake in every decision you were making. A world vibrant with color and motion. Who wouldn’t want to live there?

Of course, the India that existed outside of Bollywood was composed of filth and squalor. A few years into my Bollywood obsession, I was able to separate fact from fantasy, but by then I was hooked.

I’ve acquired most of my Bollywood DVD collection through eBay. And my eBay habit was expensive. But there was just…something…about the combination of music, song, and dance. The idea that family was more important than the individual. The concept that love could be honorable. And controllable.

Most of the time, in Bollywood, the characters never even kiss.

That’s my kind of love.

I closed the door and stood in front of the bulletin board it had hidden. The one Joe could not have seen. The bulletin board held a photo of my best friend: Andreas. We’d met each other in junior high. Hung out together through high school. Hung out, in fact, until he had died of AIDS three years before.

The bulletin board also held photos of the children I sponsor. Orphans, all. Though I grew up without a mother, they all have it ten times worse. I’ve always sponsored two from the same orphanage. I liked to imagine they could be friends. As I stood there, I said a prayer for Antonio and Jorge, hoping the Mexican sun would smile on them in the morning. For Nicolette and Adriana, that they would be protected from the diseases which run rampant in Haiti. For Maria and Gloria, that they would never be tempted by the corruption in Columbia. And for Carlos and Juan, that they would be inspired in their studies.

Then I sat down and wrote them each a letter.

The next morning the phone rang at 5:45.

I was up. The Academy class schedule started at 7:00 and so the work day on the hill, even during summer break, began at 6:45. But just because I was up didn’t mean I wanted to talk on the phone.

But Joe didn’t know that. If he had, I doubt he would have cared.

“Jackie? Hey, would you mind doing me a favor? Following me over to Motor City on the way to work? I have to drop the SUV off.”

“For good?”

“For a headlight replacement.”

Too bad. “Sure. What time?”

“Six thirty?”

“Fine. See you then.”

At 6:30 exactly, Joe rolled down the street and pulled in front of my car, and then we proceeded down the hill, went up Manitou Avenue, and headed over to Motor City. At least it wasn’t far away. Most of the dealerships in town had decided to display their products in one location. If you couldn’t find a car in Motor City, you weren’t looking hard enough. Or you’d given up out of sheer exhaustion.

I followed him to his dealership, turned off the car, and wondered if there wasn’t any other way to attract business than multicolored pennant flags.

Joe jogged over to my car, opened the door, and slid inside. Bonked his head on the roof when he straightened in his seat. Tried to slouch, but his legs were too long. Felt for a lever to adjust it.

“On the side.”

He found one. The seat collapsed behind him.

“The other one.”