Peeing, he spotted the red toothbrush still in the package on the counter.
“Good morning. Yes, I feel okay. Thank you. I see the toothbrush.”
“And I have coffee and breakfast when you get out.”
“Thank you,” he said again.
Emmett brushed his teeth using her cinnamon toothpaste, his reflection blinking back at him. He hadn’t intended on being alive to see himself in a morning mirror. He pictured the bridge in cloudy daylight, the cars whizzing by. Was there a chance he’d be conscious after hitting the river? He’d read about the rare survivor stories, but he’d also read that the impact from jumping off a bridge was the equivalent of getting hit by a car, that his body could be falling at the rate of seventy-five miles an hour. He would accelerate as he fell, then his bones would break, his organs would tear apart. Simple physics. And by chance, if those things didn’t kill him instantly, his last breath would be water.
He wasn’t scared.
Emmett splashed his face, wiped it dry on her hanging towel. Looked around at the little glass bottles and plastic tubes she had in there. Everything smelled like flowers, a girl garden.
(The hallway bathroom. Two candles: one half full of wax, one with a wick that hasn’t been lit. A photo of her and another woman hangs in a white frame next to the light switch. A hook next to the frame, holding two wooden necklaces, one beaded one. Pearly white liquid soap in the dispenser. Pale blue bath mat. Four fat bulbs of white light above her mirror. A postcard of Michelangelo’s David tacked next to it. The bathroom door handles are curved silver with curlicues on the ends. Swan’s neck faucet, silver. White floor vent, white tile. A full-length mirror on the back of the door. A wall outlet with two plugs, one holding an auto night-light. A small garbage can in the corner next to the toilet. A shower curtain matching the bath mat. A round frosted window fit for a ship.)
He was greeted by the cats sitting side by side in the hallway, watching the door. He petted them on their heads, rubbed behind their ears. When he walked into the kitchen, Tallie handed him a Harry Styles mug of coffee. Emmett pointed to Harry’s face and thanked her one more time, took a sip as she sat at the kitchen table.
(A plate of bacon, eggs, and toast. On the middle of the table—butter and local organic blackberry jam, almond butter. A carafe of water, two glasses, and a bottle of ibuprofen.)
“Red wine gives everyone a headache,” she said, touching the plastic top of the medicine. She motioned for him to have a seat. “Do you like breakfast?”
“Only a psychopath wouldn’t like breakfast,” he said. He took two ibuprofen. Last night he’d wondered if dinner would be his last meal, and now? He was ravenous for breakfast.
Emmett and Tallie ate and discussed the rain, the weekend forecast. She asked him again how he was feeling.
“Better…I feel better,” he said.
“Glad to hear it.”
He remembered the phony email to Joel and felt like garbage for it, wondering if he could make it all go away. His feelings shuffled like a deck of cards—diamonds of embarrassment, overreacting clubs, stubbornness in spades, the ace of guilt. And his heart, their hearts, still beating. Somehow. But hope. Hope was the real joker. Had he confused exhaustion for hopelessness? Maybe they felt exactly the same in the cold rain, darkness creeping.
“Just wondering…do you ever talk to Joel anymore?” he asked after a moment, attempting to make the question as casual as possible—a continuation of their conversation from the night before. If she talked to Joel via some other form of communication, she’d figure out what he’d done real easy.
“Oh…no. I actually blocked his number in my phone out of pettiness. Maybe the occasional message online, but not really. Last time he wrote me, I didn’t feel the need to respond. Nothing more to say,” she said. “On a nicer note, did you sleep well?”
The sweetness in her voice inspired a violent tenderness inside him.
“I did. Did you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, you did beat me at arm wrestling…so maybe tonight I should be behind the locked door,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. Her face went plain.
“Not that I’m trying to stay here tonight. I was kidding. I’ll be on my way soon, no worries,” he said, not fully able to decode how he wanted her to respond. Ask him to stay? Ask him to go? Leave it up to him? He ate, drank his coffee.
“No, that’s not what I meant. You’re more than welcome to stay. I’m worried about you. Maybe you need a couple days to feel back to your old self?”
Emmett swallowed and took his time. “I don’t ever want to feel back to my old self.”
“Of course not. Right,” she said, nodding. “Well, okay…so my brother, Lionel, has this huge Halloween party every year. It’s on Saturday. Tomorrow,” she said, as if he were an alien and didn’t know how the days of the week worked. “It’s a lot of fun, tons of people in wild costumes…” She stopped talking and put her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand, before sitting back in her chair and beginning again. “A proposal: How about you stay here at least until then and go to the party with me? That would be fun and something to do. It’s always good to have something to do…to look forward to. It keeps our brains happy.”
They smiled across the table at each other like old friends.
“What’d you dress up as last year?” he asked.
“Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, and my best friend, Aisha, was Dorothy, too,” she said. “My brother always goes way overboard since it’s his favorite holiday. Last year he was Houdini and rented a water tank. And! He has this friend who grows his beard out specifically to dress up like Gandalf every year, then he shaves it the day after. He even comes with his own little hobbits. The whole thing is beyond.”
“Okay, wow. Big leagues. So what’s your costume?”
“Absolutely no clue. I usually know, like, months in advance, but this year I’m so slow…with work and…everything else on my mind, I haven’t figured it out yet. And time’s a-tickin’. But it’ll all work out, because now you and I can look for costumes together.”
“I’ll do it,” he said. What did it feel like to have a happy brain? He couldn’t fully remember, although there was a flick of it somewhere inside him. But it was too small, too far away.
“Good. That’s what we’ll do today.”
* * *
(An outlet mall costume shop, but this one isn’t as sad as it could be. The costume shop is sandwiched between a shoe store and a candy store. There is a sporting goods store across from it, a kitchenware store next to that. It is a wet morning, and the world seems to have not woken up yet. The college kid working the register has his feet up on the counter. He is wearing glasses, reading a Superman comic book.)
They wandered up and down the aisles, Tallie stopping every now and then to inspect costumes a little more closely.
“See anything that looks good?” Tallie asked him from the end of a row of gorilla costumes.
“Not really,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets.
“Last time you dressed up for Halloween…what were you?”