Isla and the Happily Ever After
Page 4
“Fate doesn’t exist.” He gives me a dismissive huff. “Catalogue last night as another embarrassing mishap. It’s been a while since you’ve had one,” he adds.
“Almost a year.” I sigh. “Right on schedule.”
Josh and I have had exactly one meaningful interaction per year, none of which have left me looking desirable. When we were freshmen, Josh saw me reading Joann Sfar in the cafeteria. He was excited to find someone else interested in European comics, so he began asking me this rapid string of questions, but I was too overwhelmed to reply. I could only gape at him in silence. He gave me a weird look and then left.
When we were sophomores, our English teacher partnered us up for a fake newspaper article. I was so nervous that I couldn’t stop tapping my pen. And then it slipped from my grasp. And then it flew into his forehead.
When we were juniors, I caught him and his girlfriend making out in an elevator. It wasn’t even at school. It was inside BHV, this massive department store. I bumbled an unintelligible hello, let the doors close, and took the stairs.
“But,” I persist, “I have a reason to talk to him now. You don’t think there’s any chance that it might lead to something?”
“Since when is human behaviour reasonable?”
“Come on.” I widen my eyes like an innocent doe. “Can’t you pretend with me? Even for a second?”
“I don’t see the point in pretending.”
“That was a joke,” I explain, because sometimes Kurt needs explanations.
He scowls at himself in frustration. “Noted.”
“I dunno.” I burrow against the side of his body. “It’s not logical, and I can’t explain it, but…I think Josh will be there tonight. I think we’ll see him.”
“Before you ask” – Kurt barges into my new dorm room in Paris, three months later, narrowly missing a run-in with an empty suitcase – “no. I didn’t see him.”
“I wasn’t going to ask.” Although I was.
My last ember of hope gutters. Over the summer, it faded and faded until it was barely visible at all. The ghost of a hope. Because Kurt was right, human behaviour isn’t reasonable. Or predictable. Or even satisfying. Josh wasn’t there at midnight, nor was he there the next night. Nor the following day. I checked the café at all hours for two weeks, and my memories of happiness disintegrated as I was faced with reality: I didn’t hear any music. I didn’t feel any rain. I didn’t even see any Abe.
It was as if that night had never happened.
I looked for Josh online. I pulled his email address from last year’s school handbook, but when I tried to send a casual/friendly explanation/apology – an email that took four hours to compose – the server informed me that his account was inactive from disuse.
Then I tried the various social networks. I didn’t get far. I don’t actually have any accounts, because social networking has always felt like a popularity contest. A public record of my own inadequacies. The only thing I found was the same black-and-white, again and again, of Josh standing beside the River Seine, staring sombrely at some fixed point in the distance. I confess I’d seen it before. He’d been using the picture online for months. But it was too pathetic to sign up anywhere just to become his so-called friend.
So then I did the thing that I swore to myself I would never do: I Googled his home address. The waves of my shame were felt across state lines. But it was in this final step towards stalkerdom that I was led to the information I’d been seeking all along. His father’s website featured a photo of the family exiting an airport terminal in DC. The picture had been taken two days after Kismet, and the caption explained that they’d remain in the capital until autumn. The senator looked stately and content. Rebecca Wasserstein was waving towards the camera, flashing that toothy, political-spouse smile.
And their only child?
He trailed behind them, head down, sketchbook in arm. I clicked on the picture to make it bigger, and my eyes snagged on a blue sticker shaped like America.
I’m in there. I’m in that sketchbook.
I never saw his drawing. What would it have revealed about me? About him? I wondered if he ever looked at it. I wondered about it all summer long.
Kurt jiggles the handle of my new door, shaking me back into France. “This is catching. You need to get it fixed.”
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” I say.
He frowns. “That doesn’t make sense. The door you had last year worked fine.”
“Never mind.” I sigh. Three months is a long time. Any confidence I had in speaking to Josh has crumbled back into shyness and fear. Even if Kurt had just seen him in the hallway, it’s not like I would’ve left my room to speak with him.
Kurt pushes his body weight against the door, listens for its telltale click, and then flops down beside me on the bed. “Our doors are supposed to lock automatically. I shouldn’t be able to walk in like that.”
“And yet—”
“I keep doing it.” He grins.
“It’s strange, though, right?” My voice is tinged with the same awe that it’s had since our arrival two days ago. “Whose door that used to be?”
“Statistically unlikely. But not impossible.”
I have a lifetime’s worth of experience shaking off Kurt’s wonder-killing abilities, so his response doesn’t bother me. Especially because, despite a summer of disappointments and backtracking…
I, Isla Martin, am now living in Joshua Wasserstein’s last place of residence.
These were his walls. This was his ceiling. That black grease mark on the skirting board, the one right above the electrical outlet? He probably made that. For the rest of the year, I will have the same view of the same street outside of the same window. I will sit in his chair, bathe in his shower, and sleep in his bed.
His bed.
I trace a finger along the stitching of my quilt. It’s an embroidered map of Manhattan. When I’m in Manhattan, I sleep underneath a quilt that’s an embroidered map of Paris. But underneath this blanket and underneath these sheets, there’s a sacred space that once belonged to Josh. He dreamed here. I want this to mean something.
My door bursts back open.
“My room is bigger than yours,” Hattie says. “This is like a prison cell.”
“Almost a year.” I sigh. “Right on schedule.”
Josh and I have had exactly one meaningful interaction per year, none of which have left me looking desirable. When we were freshmen, Josh saw me reading Joann Sfar in the cafeteria. He was excited to find someone else interested in European comics, so he began asking me this rapid string of questions, but I was too overwhelmed to reply. I could only gape at him in silence. He gave me a weird look and then left.
When we were sophomores, our English teacher partnered us up for a fake newspaper article. I was so nervous that I couldn’t stop tapping my pen. And then it slipped from my grasp. And then it flew into his forehead.
When we were juniors, I caught him and his girlfriend making out in an elevator. It wasn’t even at school. It was inside BHV, this massive department store. I bumbled an unintelligible hello, let the doors close, and took the stairs.
“But,” I persist, “I have a reason to talk to him now. You don’t think there’s any chance that it might lead to something?”
“Since when is human behaviour reasonable?”
“Come on.” I widen my eyes like an innocent doe. “Can’t you pretend with me? Even for a second?”
“I don’t see the point in pretending.”
“That was a joke,” I explain, because sometimes Kurt needs explanations.
He scowls at himself in frustration. “Noted.”
“I dunno.” I burrow against the side of his body. “It’s not logical, and I can’t explain it, but…I think Josh will be there tonight. I think we’ll see him.”
“Before you ask” – Kurt barges into my new dorm room in Paris, three months later, narrowly missing a run-in with an empty suitcase – “no. I didn’t see him.”
“I wasn’t going to ask.” Although I was.
My last ember of hope gutters. Over the summer, it faded and faded until it was barely visible at all. The ghost of a hope. Because Kurt was right, human behaviour isn’t reasonable. Or predictable. Or even satisfying. Josh wasn’t there at midnight, nor was he there the next night. Nor the following day. I checked the café at all hours for two weeks, and my memories of happiness disintegrated as I was faced with reality: I didn’t hear any music. I didn’t feel any rain. I didn’t even see any Abe.
It was as if that night had never happened.
I looked for Josh online. I pulled his email address from last year’s school handbook, but when I tried to send a casual/friendly explanation/apology – an email that took four hours to compose – the server informed me that his account was inactive from disuse.
Then I tried the various social networks. I didn’t get far. I don’t actually have any accounts, because social networking has always felt like a popularity contest. A public record of my own inadequacies. The only thing I found was the same black-and-white, again and again, of Josh standing beside the River Seine, staring sombrely at some fixed point in the distance. I confess I’d seen it before. He’d been using the picture online for months. But it was too pathetic to sign up anywhere just to become his so-called friend.
So then I did the thing that I swore to myself I would never do: I Googled his home address. The waves of my shame were felt across state lines. But it was in this final step towards stalkerdom that I was led to the information I’d been seeking all along. His father’s website featured a photo of the family exiting an airport terminal in DC. The picture had been taken two days after Kismet, and the caption explained that they’d remain in the capital until autumn. The senator looked stately and content. Rebecca Wasserstein was waving towards the camera, flashing that toothy, political-spouse smile.
And their only child?
He trailed behind them, head down, sketchbook in arm. I clicked on the picture to make it bigger, and my eyes snagged on a blue sticker shaped like America.
I’m in there. I’m in that sketchbook.
I never saw his drawing. What would it have revealed about me? About him? I wondered if he ever looked at it. I wondered about it all summer long.
Kurt jiggles the handle of my new door, shaking me back into France. “This is catching. You need to get it fixed.”
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” I say.
He frowns. “That doesn’t make sense. The door you had last year worked fine.”
“Never mind.” I sigh. Three months is a long time. Any confidence I had in speaking to Josh has crumbled back into shyness and fear. Even if Kurt had just seen him in the hallway, it’s not like I would’ve left my room to speak with him.
Kurt pushes his body weight against the door, listens for its telltale click, and then flops down beside me on the bed. “Our doors are supposed to lock automatically. I shouldn’t be able to walk in like that.”
“And yet—”
“I keep doing it.” He grins.
“It’s strange, though, right?” My voice is tinged with the same awe that it’s had since our arrival two days ago. “Whose door that used to be?”
“Statistically unlikely. But not impossible.”
I have a lifetime’s worth of experience shaking off Kurt’s wonder-killing abilities, so his response doesn’t bother me. Especially because, despite a summer of disappointments and backtracking…
I, Isla Martin, am now living in Joshua Wasserstein’s last place of residence.
These were his walls. This was his ceiling. That black grease mark on the skirting board, the one right above the electrical outlet? He probably made that. For the rest of the year, I will have the same view of the same street outside of the same window. I will sit in his chair, bathe in his shower, and sleep in his bed.
His bed.
I trace a finger along the stitching of my quilt. It’s an embroidered map of Manhattan. When I’m in Manhattan, I sleep underneath a quilt that’s an embroidered map of Paris. But underneath this blanket and underneath these sheets, there’s a sacred space that once belonged to Josh. He dreamed here. I want this to mean something.
My door bursts back open.
“My room is bigger than yours,” Hattie says. “This is like a prison cell.”
