Closer Than They Appear (9 page)

Forty-thousand people actually paid to learn that you can’t tell the difference between they’re, there, and their. Jesus wept.
“Hey, congrats.”

“Still writing?”

“Yeah,” Zach said, thrilled he actually had a positive update to share. “I just sold my novel, actually.”

Matt’s smile hitched ever so-slightly. “Oh yeah? That’s great! Who picked it up?”

“It’s a small indie press. They specialize in gritty, urban fiction.”

“Huh. I thought your book took place on a farm. So what kind of advance they offer?”

Zach took a swig of beer, growing increasingly uncomfortable under GD Matt Nelson’s scrutiny. “Not much, but they do a great job with their authors.”

But Matt had stopped paying attention. “Hey, I gotta split. Just saw Kara Peterson. Chick’s got nipples like fuckin pencil erasers.” He grabbed his beer and disappeared into the crowd.

After he left, Zach let out a strangled sob. “How can such a gross human being win at everything?”

Josh craned his neck to see where Matt had gone, wearing a vague expression of curiosity. It looked like he was trying to solve a sexy riddle. “Pencil erasers. Huh.”

Harper

“HONEY, I NEED
you to pick me up on Tuesday at two in the afternoon. Are you free on Tuesday afternoon?”

“Why?” Harper asked, bleary-eyed. She turned on her bedside lamp and glanced at her alarm clock. Seven o’clock on Sunday morning, and she had a headache.

“I need you to take me to a funeral,” Ginger said. “Jim died while we were having sex. He had a heart attack on top of me.”

“What?” Harper sat up quickly and her head began to pound like a drum. “What happened?”

“I’m just kidding. Jim’s fine. But I do need to go to a funeral. Walter Bergman finally died, the miserable old dum-dum. He once pinched my ass so hard I had a bruise for three weeks!”

“It’s too early to be having this conversation.” Harper got out of bed and padded into the kitchen for a glass of water, then to the bathroom for some aspirin. When did she start getting hangovers after only two beers? “And you shouldn’t joke about people dying!”

“All right, Miss Priss. But will you take me to the funeral?”

“Why do you even want to go if you didn’t like him?” She opened the blinds to let the morning sunlight in, which immediately seemed like a bad idea, so she closed them again.

“Because everyone’s going! What, do you want me to stay home and crochet doilies?”

And there was another thing she could look forward to in old age. Funerals as social events. As she made a pot of coffee, she began to piece the night together. Sam, of course. She’d talked with Sam for nearly an hour. And somehow, she resisted his inevitable advances, ending the night with ice water and a few forkfuls of cold, leftover spaghetti over the kitchen sink.

It helped that he’d asked minimal questions about her life now.

Of course he texted around two a.m. (
Miss u already, still up? Want company?
); but if she gave in last night, where would she be today? No orgasm was worth the emptiness and disappointment she’d feel mere hours later, when he slipped out the door in the middle of the night, leaving her with a rushed, perfunctory kiss on the forehead. The entire pathetic scene played out in her mind before she told him good-bye at Oblio’s and again when she deleted his text unanswered, because she’d seen that movie a thousand times.

“You did the right thing,” Natalie said on the drive home from the bar.

“I guess so.”

“You walked away a noble woman, with your head held high!”

“And a sad vagina.”

“You’re crude after a few drinks. I like it! But you have nothing to complain about. Married sex is one thing, but unemployment is a
real
drag on the libido.”

“Oh, go put on some sexy underwear. Brian will think he died and went to heaven.”

“Are you kidding me? I tell the front and back of every single pair of my underwear apart by which side has holes blown in the seam. But thank you for not saying ‘panties.’”

“So it sounds like Sharon has a good job lead for you,” Harper said, digging through her purse for a tube of lip balm. “Does it involve helping people ‘uncontaminate their brands?’” Harper was directly quoting Sharon, who once used this very phrase to try and explain why you’d want to “force” someone to unfollow you on Twitter.

“But isn’t the point to have more followers?” Harper had asked, confused.

Sharon nodded. “Yes, but only if they reinforce your brand and message.”

The whole exchange had left her cold and mildly nauseated.

“I think it’s mostly low-man-on-the-totem-pole stuff, but it’s a foot in the door,” Natalie said. The red glow from the car’s dashboard gave the tiny pearls bedazzling her shirt a pink hue.

“Okay, but if you regularly start to use the word ‘brand’ as a verb and you’re not talking about cattle ranching, I may need to rethink our friendship.”

“Why, is that not in keeping with your brand?” Natalie asked with a smirk.

Harper smiled. “Seriously, I’m thrilled for you. It’s a great opportunity at the right time, and they’re lucky to have you.”

“Aw, you’re sweet. Hey, mind if we swing by Burger King? I’m starving, and I’m trying not to let that kind of food in my house.”

“I thought you were on Weight Watchers!” Harper said, feigning shock.

“I am, but I’m starving! One Whopper isn’t going to kill me.”

“Unless they don’t cook it long enough.”

As they pulled up to the drive-thru speaker, Natalie leaned over to shout into the microphone: “I’ll have a Whopper Junior with no cheese, no mayo, and the sweet potato curly fries because they have more vitamins.” The cashier confirmed her order and quoted the total. Natalie sat back and said, somewhat primly, “There. Everything I ordered except the burger is vegan. Happy?”

“What do you think?” Ginger asked when she climbed into Harper’s car. “Too much?” Today she was wearing a light blue wrap dress with a deep V-neck, accented by large bib-style necklace featuring chain-linked red enamel plates, giving her chest the general appearance of a raised, cobblestone patio.

“I’m just glad you’re not wearing the mustache rides shirt.”

Aunt Ginger laughed and pulled down the passenger side mirror to finish primping on their way to the funeral. “Such a shame to die in spring. I hope I die in January.”

“Don’t we all,” Harper said, followed by “Ouch!” when her aunt slapped her arm. “I don’t mean you, specifically. I mean we all probably would rather die in January than, say, June.”

“What is that you’re wearing?” Ginger said, warily appraising her niece’s outfit. “You look like a hostess at The Olive Garden.”

Harper glanced down at herself. She was wearing a crisp, short-sleeved white cotton shirt and black cigarette pants, with a small silver necklace featuring a horseshoe charm. “You do realize I make you soup, right? And now that I know you want to die in January …”

Her aunt was silent the rest of the drive.

The parking lot was packed, with streams of people in suits and dresses marching somberly into the church. Ginger whistled at the crowd. “All these people here for Walter Bergman? Who knew! God, I hope I have this kind of turnout at my funeral.”

“I’ll be sure to notify your Twitter followers,” Harper said, smiling as she helped Ginger across the parking lot. Her aunt didn’t normally need help walking, but she’d already stumbled on a crack in her three and a half-inch red heels.

“You should start taking more pictures of me now, too. For the photo display.”

“Got it.”

The church vestibule had a strangely festive, upbeat vibe; people milled about, talking and laughing in hushed voices. Gorgeous floral arrangements and plants with huge, glossy leaves flanked the altar; the air smelled of lilies, incense, and classic Old Spice, strangely enough. The sound system was playing “We’ll Meet Again,” which always made Harper think of World War II documentaries. Walter had lived to an admirable eighty-eight and was survived by his wife, five children, sixteen grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. He’d made a fortune in some sort of business related to HVAC supply and died in his sleep, which was more than most people could hope for. Ginger gave a subtle nod toward the widow, a beautiful older woman with a gray bob. “Eleanor Bergman. Talk about your
C-You-Next-Tuesdays!
”

Harper frowned. Eleanor was smiling kindly at something a younger man was saying, nodding and patting him on the hand. She had the face of a woman who read stories to toddlers at the library, of a woman who handed sandwiches to vagrants. Even if you weren’t on a bus, you’d give up your seat for someone who looked as gracious and benevolent as she did. You’d drag her to a corner just to help her cross the street. “Can’t you say anything nice about people?”

“I don’t like to lie, honey. That woman once stole a bracelet from my own bedroom when I had the girls over for game night.”

“Can you prove it? Maybe you should give people the benefit of the doubt.”

“I can’t prove it, but I know it was her.”

Later, while Aunt Ginger was chatting with another friend from the senior center, Harper was shocked to catch the widow Bergman giving Ginger the finger behind her back, furtively. Clearly, there was no love lost between the two.

They sat in a pew toward the rear of the church for the service, and Harper studied the crowd. Mostly, she observed the grandchildren, since they seemed around her age. All of them were with significant others, some with children of their own. The great-grandchildren. “You can’t compare yourself to others,” her father always patiently told her whenever her teenage self bemoaned the lack of something in her life that everyone else appeared to have: their own car, Citizens of Humanity jeans, Burberry handbags, siblings, clear skin, defined post-graduate goals. “We’ve all got our own courses to chart, on our own time.” In other words, don’t even try to keep up with the Joneses, Millers, or Benthiens, because you’ll only end up broke, disappointed, or both. You are who you are.

Even though she could accept this intellectually, it was still hard not to look at her peers and feel that insecure, panicky little calculator start chattering away somewhere to the left of her heart:
let’s see—twenty-eight becomes twenty-nine becomes the oldest person on the dance floor for the bouquet toss becomes truly dreggish dating opportunities becomes predictable midlife crisis becomes retirement (yay) becomes dying alone (boo) and only leaving two-thirds of a corpse because Meow Tse-Tung, Kitty Boo-boo, and Battlecat haven’t been fed in days.

As Teen Talk Barbie may have put it briefly in 1992, math is some depressing shit.

Harper suddenly noticed that her Aunt Ginger was engaged in an intimate, whispered side-conversation with an attractive middle-aged gentleman sitting to her left. “The Old Rugged Cross” began to play, and Ginger placed her hand on his thigh. “Oh, I love this song. It’s my favorite. That, and ‘Mony Mony.’”

Before he could ask which version, Harper pinched her aunt’s upper arm.

“Hey!”

“Leave that man alone,” Harper hissed through clenched teeth. “You’re at a funeral, not Hedonism II.”

“I think this is why you’re still single. You fail to see opportunities for love all around you.”

That’s not exactly true, Harper thought, watching Mrs. Bergman weep in the front pew. But you had to bide your time to wait for the right moment. And hope the right moment showed up when you were ready for it.

The service ended, and ushers began to shepherd family members back down the aisle to the strains of the exit hymn, “On Eagles Wings,” which never failed to put a lump in Harper’s throat. The saddest song ever, though, had to be “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie. She hoped she’d one day be lucky enough to meet the real-life person she could actually sing that song about, and vice-versa. She hoped she’d meet him soon.

They stood while the family streamed past, some weeping, others stoic and somber. One little girl twirled out, her blue dress flaring. All these people that wouldn’t exist if Walter never worked up the courage to introduce himself to Eleanor at a VFW dance back in 1952. Eleanor carried herself with dignity and a serene kind of peace. She’d had a lifetime with Walter, the wife and matriarch who helped him build a legacy and a family. Now she was curator of his memory. Or maybe she wasn’t exactly serene; maybe she was exhausted, relieved that her kids were grown and she wouldn’t have to monitor her husband’s drinking or fiber intake any longer, wonder whose derrière he was grabbing at the senior center.
Time for a nap and some me-time
, Harper imagined Eleanor thinking, to lighten her own mood a little.

“Do you want to go to the luncheon?” Harper asked her aunt when they too began to file out into the crowd.

“I’m not sure. I feel like boycotting it because they didn’t hire you to cater.”

Harper hadn’t even been in the running to cater the event and felt a swell of soft affection for her aunt at her deep, unabashed loyalty. “Aw, that’s sweet of you!”

“Plus they’re having crab salad sandwiches, and I’m allergic to shellfish.”

Zach

“DUDE, WHEN’S THE
last time you cleaned the bathroom? It’s fucking heinous in here!” Zach shouted at Josh, who was immersed in another online Call of Duty game. An orange and brown sunset ringed their sink, and the countertop was a mountain range of dried toothpaste globs. He couldn’t be sure, but the last film in the
Saw
franchise may have been filmed entirely in their toilet bowl. To say nothing of the shower!

In answer, Josh leaned into the controller and filled the room with the sound of machine gunfire. He wouldn’t be getting much writing done in the apartment that day, so Zach decided to run a few errands—pick up some bathroom cleaner and groceries, maybe a new pair of jeans because he’d lost some weight recently. Nervous stomach because
he had a novel coming out, bitches!

He lived within walking distance of the nearest Target, so he decided to stop there first. “Don’t forget your coupons, Mary!” Josh called after him in falsetto. The sad thing (or maybe it was a smart thing) was that he actually had some Target coupons in his wallet—as long as they kept printing them out along with his receipts, he’d keep using them.