Traps (3 page)

He says, “Hey, how’s your nausea?”

“Thriving.”

“Have you thought about seeing a doctor? Maybe it’s not the triathlon
training. Maybe you’ve got some kind of bug. Swine flu. West Nile. Encephalitis.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s the training.”

“Maybe it’s sympathy nausea! ‘Radiation Side Effects Particularly Strong in Devoted Lovers of Melanoma Patients, New Study Reveals.’ ”

“It’s worse after exertion, mostly after the longer runs.”

“Or hey! When was the last time you got your period?”

“A girl like me does
not
get inadvertently pregnant, Ian.”

“Accidents happen—”

“Only to disorganized people.”

“There’s always room for serendipity.”

“I take the pill,
and
I make you use a condom.”

“Okay, fair point. I have some ginger ale in the fridge if you want some.”

“That sounds pretty good, actually.”

She opens the refrigerator. Inside is a loaf of white bread, a six-pack of ginger ale, and one can of Boost nutritional supplement drink. She pulls out a ginger ale and cracks it open and takes a sip.

Then she goes to her backpack and brushes aside the millet and bits of peanut shell and opens a zippered compartment to withdraw a little plastic tube of multivitamin tablets—the kind you drop into water and make fizz. Ian is watching her. She takes a glass from his cupboard and drops an orange disk in the bottom with a tinkling sound. She fills it up with water and slides it toward him among the dark skins.

He watches it dissolve, hissing. An ugly lacing of yellow foam rims the top of the glass.

“It’s good for you,” she says.

“Maybe.”

“It can’t hurt.”

“We’ll see.”

“Humor me?”

He smiles at her. “As long as we both shall live,” and he gulps it down, tipping his head back, the ridge of scar exposed. Dana looks
away, her eyes settling on his messy counter: the plastic bag of paper napkins, his keys and wallet, the sea of skins and streaks of avocado and a box of needles not quite closed and that pile of mail, slipping among the pits and peels. A postcard. A utility bill. An ad for a wireless plan. An open envelope from Aetna insurance, the top of it sticking out with a phone number handwritten in purple crayon across the top:

Dear Mr. Freeman:

We regret to inform you …

“What’s that from Aetna?” she says.

“Just a letter.”

“What do they regret to inform you?”

“They denied one of my claims.” He takes another avocado and slices it open with a heedless little zip of his paring knife.

“For how much?”

“Thirty thousand-ish.”

“That’s terrible!”

“We’ll see.”

“How can you say that?”

He squeezes the yellow-green into the pan. “I’m sure it will all work out in the end.”

“How?”

“One thing will happen. And then another and another. And so on.”

She grabs the letter. At the top is an incongruous blue-and-yellow logo—a stick figure with arms upraised to catch rays of light. Dana goes to her backpack and takes out a pen and a tiny notebook. “Do you mind if I write some of this down?”

“Not if you don’t mind my finding your relentless notetaking mysteriously arousing.”

She crouches among the seeds and writes, “Sylatron.… 888 micro-grams.… Aetna Claims Division.”

Ian is wiping his hands on his shorts as he moves to crouch next to
her. He has to stand under the bird perch to do it, and he settles in beside her, the millet and hulls cracking beneath his bare feet. He kisses her on the shoulder.

“Hold on a sec,” she says, and keeps scribbling.

He kisses her again. “I can appeal it, Dana. It happens all the time with cancer treatments.”

“Can I borrow this for a night? There’s so much here.”

“You can borrow anything,” he says.

She makes another note. Then closes her notebook and slips it in a little pocket with the letter, folding it small.

He says, “What else have you got in there?”

She smiles and zips the pocket shut.

He says, “Please? Just a few things?”

She rolls her eyes, but she unzips the top compartment and reaches inside. She draws out a roll of duct tape. A ziplock bag of zip ties. A ziplock bag of ziplock bags.

“Temptress,” he says.

She pulls out a set of tiny screwdrivers. A box of matches. A pair of black sandals. A small white-noise machine and a little box of earplugs.

“Vixen.”

She laughs then and turns awkwardly to kiss him, a long kiss, both of them squatting over her backpack under the bird stand among his dirty shoes.

He says, “Will you stay for the party?”

She winces.

“Is that a yes?”

She puts the duct tape back in the bag. “I have twenty-three steps in my latest sleep-improvement regime.” She puts away the matches and the zip ties.

He says, “Maybe that’s part of the problem.”

“What is?”

“All the steps. A regime.”

She gathers the remaining things and arranges and rearranges them
inside. He himself falls asleep so easily. She has seen it many times before she steals back to her snow white room, his arms and legs splayed wide in the center of his churned sheets, his lips parted. Sometimes tiny tears form at the outer corners of his closed blue eyes.

He says, “Maybe what you need is a super late night of blue drinks and the comfort of sleeping in an unfamiliar bed with a charming snorer who adores you.”

She is still shifting things around in her bag. “It’s just the way I’m built, Ian. That should comfort me—I’m with you on that—but it doesn’t. You know what comforts me?” She takes her hand out of her backpack and looks at him squarely.

“Tell me.”

“Being alone. Being in my own room alone. Or even—it’s crazy, get this—wearing a costume. Helmets too. Helmets comfort me. And sinking to the bottom of a public pool. Or here’s another weird one—being in a motel room. An empty, sterile, anonymous motel room.”

“You sleep well in motel rooms?”

“Well, no. But I feel comfortable in them. They soothe me.”

She takes the duct tape out one last time and moves it to the other side. The two of them are crouched so close together their faces are almost touching. Her elbow grazes him as she jockeys things around.

He says, “I love this backpack, Dana. This backpack has appeared in all five of my favorite dreams. But I’m telling you, whatever finally helps you sleep peacefully, it isn’t going to be in this backpack.”

“Why?” she says with mock surprise. “What’s missing?”

“They don’t make ziplocks for everything.”

“You do know they come in gallon and snack size now, right?”

“Some things can’t be bagged.”

“Like what?”

“Luck.”

“You’re so superstitious.”

“It’s not superstition. It’s respect for the inexplicable, and actually you’ve got plenty.”

“Name one example.”

“All those things you try to help you sleep. What is that if not voodoo?”

Everything is back in her backpack now, and she zips the top shut.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She looks tired, but Ian is smiling, and his eyes are soft on her.

She says, “You’re probably right. But for tonight at least, I better stick with my twenty-three steps. I want to be well rested for work and your sister’s wedding tomorrow. I know how important it is to you.”

He shrugs, still smiling. “We’ll see.”

“Besides”—she stands up, hefting the pack—“you’ve given me a project. You know how I like a project.”

The intercom rings then, and she turns and puts her hand on the doorknob, but he rises quickly and lays a hand against the door to stop her opening it. He presses the button on the intercom. “Avocasa!” he says. “Enter to be delighted!” Then he releases the button and lays his hand on Dana’s shoulder. Pieces of birdseed drop from their clothes to the floor, a soft ticking like the end of a rain.

“Dana,” he says. “I know it’s not the birds. Or the frogs. Or your insomnia.”

She keeps her chin level, but she cuts her eyes away to a point just beyond his face. She says, “I just think we should wait a while.”

“I know uncertainty is not your best thing, but the truth is, anything can happen. The treatment could work and I could live to be a hundred, still teaching surfing and annoying my neighbors with flamenco music. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow on my way to Rite Aid to buy more Boost.”

“Not if I buy you more Boost.”

He closes his eyes and presses a last kiss on her forehead. They can hear footsteps approaching in the hall. He takes his hand off the door.

“Have fun tonight,” she says, and then she steps out into the long beige hallway and turns left, away from his guests, and walks away without looking back. The sound of his Spanish music shimmies and pumps
behind her and fades a bit each time she turns the corner, turns the corner, past the dark brown doors and the one little welcome mat, one little wreath, past her own door to the elevator to the garage.

The Boost, it turns out, is at the end of an aisle stocked disconcertingly with bedpans and adult diapers, and it takes her a second, standing there in the fluorescent light, to make herself move to take some from the shelf. The Muzak from above is something familiar but slowed down, and played with a tinny-sounding piano that makes her sad. The cans are grouped in packs of twelve, slipcovered in a cardboard case with a handle at the top, and when she places her hands on a pair at eye level on the top shelf and slides them back and off, taking their weight like a village girl with two buckets of water, she sees that there, pressed against the white perforated metal back wall of the shelving where the two cases of Boost used to be, is a single boxed pregnancy test.

Dana looks up and down the aisle for other boxes like it, but of course there are none. It is an aisle for the sick and dying. The box is pink, with a picture of a delighted woman holding the white plastic test stick, and a band of blue reads, “Second Test Free Inside.” On the shelf on either side of it is a thin furry strip of dust, where the cases of Boost never reach.

Back in the garage she finds the door to Ian’s green Volkswagen unlocked, as she knew she would, and she places the cases of Boost on his seat. Her apartment is dark now, but her window is still cracked and through it she can hear the flamenco music and the laughter from his party. She passes through her dark living room and flicks on the lights in her bathroom, and from her backpack she withdraws the boxed test. The instruction sheet crackles as she takes it out. She examines the pictograms. She reads the tiny print. She pulls down her pants and holds the stick between her legs, staring at her socks on the floor on the blue circle of rug. A faint chorus of cheers floats in from Ian’s party, and she recaps the stick and sets it facedown on the counter and fastens her pants and then flushes and washes her hands, soaping thoroughly. When she has dried them, she flips it over and sees that she is in fact pregnant.

Over the next hour, even with the blinds drawn and the window closed fully, she can hear the backbeat from Ian’s music. The Planned Parenthood website shows eight clinics offering abortion services within a ten-mile radius of her apartment. The American Cancer Society recommends a fifteen-step process for handling a denial of claim for prescribed treatments. The Patient Advocate Foundation has several sample letters of appeal. She owes him the news, she knows this, but it is ten o’clock, and his apartment is full of people, and the news is not only private, but also (she is certain) to him it will be heartbreakingly sad. Dana’s printer whirs and clicks, and she collates and staples as the papers roll out into the tray. She labels folders. She separates her printouts inside them with little colored tabs. Last, from under her keyboard she takes a cream-colored envelope addressed to Ms. Dana Bowman. There is an invitation inside it to the wedding, and a little card with printed directions to the chapel in San Marino where she will meet Ian after work. She will tell him in the parking lot in case he does not want her to stay. She adds this to the stack, and fits all of it neatly into a large flat pocket at the back of her backpack.

Then Dana irons her dress, setting up the board and iron in the center of her living room and doing a good job, taking care at the seams not to make the cloth pucker, and she zips it back into the clear bag and hangs it again in her closet.

When she slips into bed she is wearing just plain cotton underpants and a long white T-shirt. A black sleep mask and a pair of earplugs lie on the nightstand at the base of the lamp. She twists a switch to lower the light to a cavelike dimness, and she presses a button on her iPod, and the man’s voice is so soft and gentle it is almost shaky. There are long pauses, a minute or more, between the things he says.

“First, lie on your back with your arms and legs at a distance from each other that allows you to relax them completely.…”

“Notice if you are holding any tension anywhere else in your body.…”

“Notice your jaw.…”

“Notice your tongue.…”

During the pauses there is only her breathing, and the distracting bass thumping from Ian’s party, but lying there in the orderly dim, centered on the big bed beneath the print of triangle tiles that waver and change into birds, Dana ignores the backbeat and follows her plan.