This Glittering World (5 page)

O
n Thursday, after his second class, he went upstairs into his office, which he shared with three other adjuncts, and was glad to see no one was there. That was the advantage of teaching early morning classes. He almost never had to deal with anybody lurking around in his office. He set down the new stack of essays and clicked on the monitor of the one antiquated computer.

Early on he’d tried to make his office feel like it belonged to him, putting books on the bookshelves, hanging up a couple of posters on the walls and the back of the door. But after three or four rotations of grad students and other adjuncts, any attempt to make it feel more permanent than it was seemed futile and pathetic. The truth was, he didn’t know if he’d even have a job lined up from one semester to the next. There had been times when he’d been able to get only one section of US History to 1865; when he was lucky, they’d offer him two or three. Only one tenure-track position had come open the whole time he’d been there, and it had gone to a woman who had published four books already. He knew that if he wanted a real academic job, he’d have to go on the job list and be willing to move. He’d have to relocate to Mississippi or Kansas or Florida if he wanted tenure. Benefits. All those things you’re supposed to have by the time you’re thirty with a PhD. But what he’d realized in the last several semesters was that, while he loved history, he really didn’t like teaching it.

Sara was constantly suggesting that he should be willing to look beyond Flagstaff. She could work anywhere, she said. And it was true, as a nurse her options were limitless.
California,
she said.
New England. I don’t care where I am as long as I’m with you.
She’d gone as far as to print out real estate offerings in places like Maine and Oregon, places where she knew there were openings at universities. “We could sell the house and have a good down payment,” she said. “It would be an adventure.”

He knew that although Sara had grown up in Arizona, there were times when she was envious of her friends who had left. One of her girlfriends from high school went to Los Angeles after graduation and had made a pretty good career in commercials. They’d see her at least once a month on TV selling Jell-O or laundry detergent or tax software. And her friend Stacy from nursing school had married some guy she met on spring break and moved to Manhattan, where he got a job at a big financial firm. Sara talked about Los Angeles and New York as if they were the most exotic places in the world. “We could move to DC,” she had said. “Wouldn’t it be nice to go back home?”

The only thing that kept Sara from insisting they move was that her family still lived here, her parents just a couple of hours’ drive to Phoenix, her brother in Tucson. And while she claimed to dream of leaving, Ben suspected that he could probably call her bluff at any moment. They had dinner with her parents at least once a month, her mom was always coming up to take her shopping, and her dad showed up every time something needed to be fixed whether or not Ben was able to fix it himself. What would have made her happier than anything was if Ben would agree to move to Phoenix.

Ben sat down at his computer, looked at the desktop photo of one of his office mate’s daughters, and checked his e-mail. He clicked through the excuses and apologies from his students who hadn’t made it to class, through the spam, and then stopped. He clicked on the first e-mail Shadi had sent and nervously clicked
REPLY.

Can you meet me for lunch today at Café Espress? Around 1:00?
he typed and looked around the office guiltily, as though someone might be peering over his shoulder.

Within moments, she responded.
I’ll be there.

Café Espress on San Francisco is one of the few places in town where you can actually get something healthy to eat. Organic produce, sandwiches on crunchy homemade bread piled high with sprouts. Sun tea. Punks and hippies. Sara called it Café Patchouli. He’d picked it because it was a place that Sara never went.

Shadi was already there, sitting at a table in the window; she waved and motioned for him to come join her. He thought about being on display like this, like a clothing store mannequin or a sports shop kayak. He thought about who might see him and what they might say.

The warm air enveloped him as the door closed behind him. It smelled good in here. Like homemade bread. He went to Shadi’s table and took off his coat, unwrapped his scarf.

Today she was wearing jeans and boots and a turtleneck sweater. Her hair was up in a bun, held in place with a pencil. She smiled and stood up, leaning into him for a hug. She smelled good, that fresh-cut grass smell.

“Sit,” she said.

Ben sat down and picked up a menu. He tried to focus on the lunch items, but the words blurred together, swimming across the page. He put the menu down and looked at her. Her eyes were warm pools; she was waiting for him.

“Ricky
was
at Jack’s that night, but he left early,” Ben offered.

She nodded.

“There was a girl, some stupid girl who kept bothering him,” he said. He didn’t want to repeat what it was that she was doing. The cowgirl and Indian shit. It made him feel guilty, ashamed. But if he didn’t say it, it was like he was protecting the girl instead of protecting Shadi.

She tilted her head and looked at him for an explanation.

“She was trying to get her boyfriend to take a picture of the two of them. She was dressed up like a cowgirl. For Halloween.”

Shadi’s eyes grew dark.

“Her boyfriend and Ricky left Jack’s around the same time. They’d been playing pool together.”

The waitress came over to take their order. Her arms were tattooed, and she had a large silver lip ring that looked a little infected. She seemed put out by their requests. Dressing on the side for Shadi. Jack instead of Swiss for Ben. She scratched their orders on her pad and huffed as she walked away with their menus.

Shadi shrugged and smiled.

Ben peered out the window. The lunch crowd and students and tourists filled the streets. It was a cold but gorgeous sunny day, with almost no evidence of the weekend’s snowstorm remaining. A train rumbled and then screamed past them on the tracks a block away. Ben studied the faces of the people on the sidewalks, worried about seeing someone he knew. Sara usually ate lunch at work, part of the diet. He could picture her watching her Lean Cuisine spinning around inside the microwave in the break room. He used to meet her for lunch. He used to bring her rolled tacos or slices of pizza from Alpine Pizza. They’d eat in the break room together or, if it was nice, out at the picnic table on the office park’s lawn. Even eating had turned into a sort of drudgery for her lately.

“Have you talked to the police anymore?” Ben asked.

She shook her head. “They say that he got drunk and passed out. Fell down, hit his head. He died of exposure.”

“But he wasn’t drunk. Didn’t that show up in the autopsy?”

“There was no autopsy,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s against our beliefs. Well, my grandmother’s beliefs anyway.”

“They must have done a blood alcohol test at the hospital,” Ben said.

Shadi looked out the window. A woman was tethering a collie to a bike rack. “They did. His blood alcohol was point-oh-eight.”

“That doesn’t make sense. You said he doesn’t drink, and even if he did, point-oh-eight is hardly drunk enough to pass out. And what about his injuries? What about the trauma to his head? That was no fall.” Ben felt anger spreading from his gut to his arms. He felt his hands clenching into fists.

“You don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “The rules aren’t the same.”

“What do you mean
rules?”

“They found alcohol, they found their answer. That’s enough for them. Case closed.” Shadi shut her eyes and turned toward the window. The sun was so bright it almost hurt. “God, I’m starving. Where’s our food?”

After lunch, Ben drove Shadi back to campus. She had an art history class at three o’clock, and Ben needed to pick up the essays he’d left in his office. He parked near campus and they walked together. Ben was already formulating his excuses in case anyone saw him.
She’s a student of mine. A grad student TA. A friend.
A friend? What was she really?
Who
was she to him?

At the entrance to his building, Shadi said, “I know it’s a lot to ask, but is there any way you could meet me tomorrow at the Downtowner? I need to move things out of Ricky’s room. I don’t know anyone else with a truck.”

“You don’t have a car?” he asked.

She shook her head. “This is my ride,” she said, pointing to a rusty three-speed bicycle locked to the bike rack outside the building.

“What do you do in the winter?”

“Hang on tight,” she said, laughing. Then she unlocked the bike and hopped on. “Can you meet me out in front of the building at ten o’clock? You don’t teach tomorrow, right?”

“No,” he said, and watched her pedal away. “I’m free.”

T
he first time Ben saw Sara was on campus at school nearly six years ago. He was studying, sprawled out on the grass in front of the library, surrounded by a fortress of books. She was walking along down the sidewalk, a backpack slung over her shoulder, smiling like someone had just told her a joke. She even shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. He watched her because she was so pretty and so
happy.
It’s such a rare thing to see people so joyful. So absolutely content.

He asked her once later what she was smiling about, and she said that someone had just hollered,
Hey, beautiful!
at her as she walked across the grass. And Ben said that he’d almost done the same.

He was in the throes of finals after his second year. He was miserable, wondering what the hell he’d been thinking. Pursuing a PhD in history had seemed like a good idea two years before (when he was twenty-two, fresh out of Georgetown, and in love with the prospect of teaching someday).When he started graduate school, he romanticized the life he’d one day have: the handsome young professor in jeans and a tweed blazer, fawning coeds vying for the front-row seats, him brilliant and funny as he taught his students to love history as much as he did. But suddenly, as he crammed his brain full of facts and time lines, theories and speculations, he started to wonder if this had been a big fat waste of time. He was living in a dumpy studio south of the tracks. The train rattled his windows every single time it went by, and there was the faint scent of raw sewage every time he opened his back door. Getting his PhD, if he wasn’t willing to leave Flagstaff, seemed like nothing other than a feather in his cap. A useless frilly feather that did nothing but blow about in the wind. And then he saw Sara walk across the quad, smiling to herself, almost laughing out loud, and any doubts he’d had flew out the window.

He’d leapt up and decided to follow her, leaving his books on the grass behind him. She’d gotten all the way to the student union before she turned around and said, “Have you been following me this whole time?”

When he said, “Maybe just a little,” she laughed and said, “Well, you must be thirsty, then. Let me get you something to drink.” And she’d taken him to a vending machine, popped a dollar in, pressing the button for a Mountain Dew without even asking what he wanted, and handed it to him. “There. Now tell me your name.”

Within a month, she was spending the night in his room four nights a week, going home only to shower and do her laundry. She lived with three other girls in an apartment off of Lonetree Road. Melanie was one of them. They had grown up together in Phoenix, come to Flagstaff for college, and now they were both in their final year of nursing school. She and Melanie both got jobs at Dr. Newman’s office as soon as they graduated. Sara moved out of her apartment and signed a lease on a place closer to downtown. She never asked Ben if he wanted to move in with her; she just brought him a bunch of boxes from the grocery store and started packing.

He used to love that she took charge with everything. He loved that she was so decisive. And he really loved that she liked to sleep with him. He was surprised by how easy the sex was with her. No game playing, no pleading. She seemed to know when he wanted her, and a lot of times she wanted him first. Either way, she let him know. He loved to follow her into the bedroom, loved the way her soft wide hips swayed.

He loved that she sang at the top of her lungs in the shower. He loved that the smallest things gave her pleasure: a pint of ice cream on a hot day, thunderstorms, a nice long hike in Oak Creek Canyon. She was so
happy
all of the time. She was optimistic, positive that everything would eventually go her way.

What he finally realized was, her optimism was grounded in the fact that nothing ever, ever went awry in Sara’s world. She’d never been denied anything. She’d never been truly disappointed. She’d always had enough money. Good friends. Parents who were still married, a brother she adored. Not a single person she was close to had died. This might seem like a ridiculous reason to fall in love, but for Ben, something about the simple lack of sorrow in her life was almost magical. It was as if she were somehow blessed, golden. And maybe he thought that by virtue of being her boyfriend, some of this good fortune might rub off on him.

But instead, he’d let her down. He’d been the first and only disappointment in Sara’s life. He was the curdled milk in the fridge. The weeds in the garden. The cloud shrugging off its silver lining.

In six short years, he had systematically turned her life from sublime to miserable. From simple and contented to ordinary and mundane. Nothing made her happy anymore. She deserved better than this.

B
en parked his truck near Jack’s and walked down to the Downtowner Apartments, where Shadi was standing out front smoking a cigarette. She had her bike with her, and the basket was brimming with pears. Her face lit up when she saw him. “Where’s your truck?” she asked.

“It’s up the street.” He didn’t want to have to explain to Sara what he was doing if she, or anybody else, saw his truck down here. “Are those
pears?
Where did they come from?”

“That tree over there,” she said, gesturing to a lone pear tree that, despite the weather, was replete with fruit.

They went inside the apartment building and down the hall. For some reason, he’d imagined the place cordoned off with yellow police tape. Instead, there was nothing. Just an empty hallway that smelled vaguely musty and a lot of closed doors. She put her key in the lock and opened the door to Ricky’s room. Inside, there was an unmade mattress and box spring on the floor, a guitar stand with an electric guitar, and a laundry basket full of clothes. A fridge, a microwave, and a small TV. Next to the bed were a stack of books, all of them Stephen King paperbacks. Shadi sat down on the bed and put her face in her hands.

He hadn’t seen her cry before. Not at the hospital, not at the funeral. But now, in this quiet room, she was falling apart.

“Hey,” he said tentatively. He sat down next to her on the bed and slowly put his arm across her shoulder. Her entire body was quaking.

“He was so lonely,” she said, looking up at him. “What kind of life is this?” she asked, gesturing to the monastic room. “I told him not to come here. That at least in Chinle he had friends. He had family.”

“He had you here,” Ben offered. “Maybe he wanted to be closer to you.”

“He drove me crazy!” she said, wiping her tears hard with the back of her hand. “I asked him to move out because I couldn’t stand him living with me. His music, all day and all night. He’s messy,” she said, pointing to a crumb-covered dish and a glass with a hard disk of orange juice at the bottom. “He always told the dumbest jokes. His feet smelled. He was so big! There wasn’t room for him.”

Ben suddenly felt awkward holding on to Shadi, and he lifted his arm off her shoulders and coughed so he’d have something to do with his hands.

“Ben, what do
you
think happens when people die?”

Ben took a deep breath. After Dusty died and they went home from the hospital without her, he’d curled up in his bed alone. He’d waited for someone to come and explain to him what would happen next. What to expect. Not for him, for them, but for
her.
But neither his mother nor father offered anything. There was no heaven in his house, no God.

Ben shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Shadi wiped away her tears. “My people believe that you shouldn’t cry when someone dies. That too much emotion can interrupt their journey to the underworld. That the dead person’s spirit might attach itself to you, or to a place, or to an object if the journey is interrupted. Do you think that’s possible?”

This time, he nodded. Without heaven, without angels,

Dusty became a ghost. She lived in every particle of dust, in every shadow. She lived in all the empty places; maybe she still did.

“Well,” she said, standing up from the bed. “At least it shouldn’t take long to clear this shit out.”

Shadi put everything into the laundry basket (the books, the clothes, the TV, a small amplifier, and a carton of cigarettes), which Ben carried, and she rode her bike next to him to the truck, the guitar slung over her back. “Thanks for helping me out,” she said.

“No problem,” he said, shrugging.

She took the pears out of the bike basket and threw her bike and Ricky’s stuff into the bed of the truck. Ben drove up Humphreys so they wouldn’t have to pass the doctor’s office on San Francisco and then pulled out onto Fort Valley Road.

When they drove into her spot at the RV park, she got out of the truck and he got out to help her. “It’s okay, I’ve got it,” she said, lowering the bike to the ground and grabbing the rest of the stuff. “Listen, thanks for helping me out and I’m sorry about that earlier. I didn’t mean to fall apart like that. It’s not usually my way.”

He waited for her to invite him in. It was early; Sara wouldn’t be home from work for another couple of hours, and he didn’t have to work that night. He wanted to keep talking to her. He wanted to stay.

“Okay, I’ll see you,” she said.

His heart sank a little. He got in the truck, and she started to chain her bike to the trailer. He leaned over to the passenger side and rolled the window down.

“Hey, I’m going to see if I can find anything out about the other places Ricky might have gone that night. I’ve got friends who tend bar at some of the other places he might have been hanging out. Somebody had to have seen something.”

She stood up and smiled. She came over to the window and handed him a pear. “Thanks,” she said, and then she unlocked the trailer door and disappeared inside.

He sat in the driveway for a minute. He couldn’t believe she and Ricky had lasted as long as they had, sharing such a tiny space. He wondered what it looked like inside. He wondered what she was doing in there. And then he shook his head,
no,
this was crazy, and he put the key in the ignition and backed out. On the way home, he ate the pear, just a couple of bites. It wasn’t ripe yet, though, too hard and too green, almost bitter.