Home > The Eighth Girl(9)

The Eighth Girl(9)
Author: Maxine Mei-Fung Chung

“Deal. Though hell is other people.” Ella grabs her bag. “Drink up,” she says, eyeing the guys about to leave.

I finish the goo, paying careful attention to the taste of lemon and spinach. “Ready.”

“Let’s go,” Ella sings. “Wait till you see this jacket I want. It’s divine!”

Standing, Ella and Grace smooth their matching bobs.

“Divine,” Grace echoes.

The three of us lurch onto the escalator. Impatient, Ella starts to climb while checking her slim silhouette in the panes of glass. At the third floor, we jump off, surrounded by luxury items. Ella clearly knows where she’s going and makes a beeline, Grace in tow, for an industrial clothes rail suspended from the ceiling.

“Can I help you with anything?” a sales assistant asks, thrilled, I imagine, at the prospect of paying customers.

“We’re just looking.” Ella smiles.

The sales assistant turns on her heel. Begins to straighten a stripy mohair sweater, aligning it with a bell jar—a stuffed crow inside. Several necklaces hanging from its beak. I think a magpie would have made more sense, but still, it’s an effective display. We stop at the floating clothes rail, Ella sighing with pleasure and fixing her eyes on what I imagine is the jacket. But just as Ella’s hand reaches to pull out her little piece of heaven, another hand swoops in—

“Sorry.” Both voices chime simultaneously.

For once, I’m relieved to say the synchronized voices are not mine—a tall, pretty girl with hair like butter and gold hoop earrings steps back, smiles, and then pulls her hand away.

“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” She smiles.

“Yeah.” Ella sighs, stroking the soft arm of the fawn leather jacket as if it were a pussycat.

“Do you have this in a size ten?” the girl shouts over her shoulder.

The sales assistant says she will check, then totters off in search of the perfect ten. Ella, however, takes the existing jacket off the rail and tests its size, sliding herself into its creamy leather arms. She strokes it again, this time with both hands.

“Stunning,” I say wistfully.

“Yeah, it looks great,” the girl repeats, both of us nodding and admiring its flawless fit while Ella coos and purrs. I reach around the back of the jacket’s soft leather collar, my hand feeling like it’s entered the pouch of a baby kangaroo, and check the price tag.

“Are you serious?” I squeal, causing Grace to flinch.

“What?” Ella smiles.

“That’s crazy.”

“But it’s worth it. Don’t you think?”

“No!” I say, pulling my hand away.

The girl looks at us, bemused, the sales assistant returning with the size ten draped across her arm like a giant restaurant napkin, then offers it to the girl.

“I’ll take it!” the girl sings. Not bothering to try it on. Just like that. Bam.

I turn to Ella, her face now morphed into a contorted, sadder version of itself while the girl saunters off to pay. Watching her replace the jacket on its hanger, it’s all I can do not to whip out my bank card right there on the spot and shout, “We’ll take it!” completely emptying my savings to ease Ella’s longing. I attempt a smile, but Ella simply shrugs. Her heart clearly sick.

“Why don’t we look around?” I suggest, hoping the distraction might help her disappointment, but it appears Ella’s sick heart is no longer in it. Instead she stays rooted to the spot. Ogling the jacket.

Grace, now bored, wanders toward a set of mannequins, all without heads, and fiddles with a leather purse diagonally draped over one of their shoulders. As I pull out a random denim skirt, folded next to the stuffed crow, I catch Ella staring at the girl and her new jacket. Longing replaced now with a pursed lip.

“Come on, let’s go,” Ella says, giving the jacket one final stroke. “I’m taking us all for sweet bagels. Extra cinnamon and cream.”

Head thick with unease, I bend down and stare into the bell jar. The crow’s trapped beady little eyes staring back, deadened and glassy. It’s as if they’ve been watching us all along. Our every move reflected back in their icy black glare. Slowly I stand, the crow’s gaze now pursuing me as I trail Ella and Grace out toward the escalator.

Following behind, I notice their pace quickening as if in search of something or someone. But as I draw closer I lurch backward. My eyes not quite believing. Ella thrusting what appears to be the fawn leather jacket deep into her bag. She nods to Grace—the two of them now streaming ahead—sleek as wind. Their focus pinned, relentless. Like thieves in the night.

 

 

5

Daniel Rosenstein

 


Every Friday at ten a.m., I attend my weekly AA meeting in Angel. For eleven years I’ve visited the same church, or rather, the same rec room in the same church, and sat beside other recovering alcoholics. On occasion, even after all these years, I can still struggle if someone looks at me the wrong way or if life feels too good. Or if someone I love rejects or distances themselves. “Never get too comfortable or let your guard down,” an early sponsor once said to me, “not until you’ve notched up some sobriety.”

For an hour and a half, I sit and mostly listen. Sometimes I share. And at the end of it I’m still surprised at how each time my spirits are lifted. Any earlier resentments or self-preoccupation eventually set down. The intimacy with other recovering alcoholics often providing a remedy for my tender loneliness. Sometimes I ask myself whether they all meet at night—for a Chinese or Indian meal, or the cinema maybe. And whether they’ve simply given up asking me because I’ve refused so many times. Paranoia revealing itself, I realize I’m being sensitive and let it drop.

Today I know everyone here, apart from a couple of newcomers. Both of them young men in their twenties. Resting a bottle of water beside my brogued foot, I wait for the chatter to settle down. Opposite me, an old-timer, twenty years sober, who up until last year was militant around any kind of medication, including aspirin. Then his mother died, and it was clear he needed a little help. Once a man, twice a child. Next to him sits a single mother of three, seven years sober. She struggles and avoids eye contact with the men in the group. Keeps her legs crossed at all times. Today she shifts awkwardly in her chair, her face flushed and swollen. A slight shake to her voice.

“This morning,” she begins, “my eldest son said I preferred his sister to him. He’s probably right. My mother did the absolute opposite. She hated me, preferred my brother.”

Recovering addicts will often look for reasons to make sense of the monkey on our backs. Hateful mothers, violent fathers. Broken homes. And as a result, we the addicts act on that hurt, finding brief ease in all manner of habits. For some of us, the chemical condition marked by irresistible craving transforms our affliction from a defect of character into a disease, making it a hybrid of the medical and the moral. But in my journey, I believe it to be a moral issue; that is, my desire. My desire, and my struggle to control it. I look about the room, wondering about the desire within each of us—how well we do now to rein it in, like a leathered fist guiding a wild horse, dust rising from the filth beneath our feet.

 

When I reach Kabuki, the maître d’ asks for a name.

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