Every Breath You Take (6 page)

“What do
you
think it means?”

“That maybe . . . I’m finally starting to . . . let go.”

Dr. Wexler scribbled something in her notes and nodded. “Oh, yes, yes, yes. That is progress. Now. When you think about Natalie right now, right this moment, what are you thinking?”

He couldn’t tell her what he was really thinking, which was to wonder what she was doing right at this moment. Was she eating? What was she eating? What was she drinking? Was she by herself? Was she eating with other people? What was she wearing? Pants? A skirt? High-heeled shoes or flats? What kind of perfume was she wearing? How was she wearing her hair? Was it long? Was it short? Was she talking? Was she listening? Was she laughing? Was she sad?

Whenever he’d said any of those things, the corners of the doctor’s mouth would push themselves down into rigid little curlicues and she would shake her head and tell him he was obsessing. She would draw the word out on a long string—obbseeeesssing, with a little hiss. Then she would sigh and make a notation in his chart.

“I think maybe . . . maybe what you’ve been saying all this time is right. That I have to start accepting that. . .” he hung his head down. “That I can’t have Natalie.”

He wanted to laugh. Oh, he’d have Natalie. He’d have her. Draw that out on a string.

The curlicues turned themselves upward, like the ends of a handlebar mustache, and he could only imagine what Dr. Wexler was scrawling in his file now. Probably something like “breakthrough.”

Dr. Wexler clasped her hands together. “Good, good. Very good! Now. Let’s talk about what that means.”

He licked his lips and tried to keep the smile off his face.

Just tell them what they want to hear.

N
atalie popped a piece of gum in her mouth, relishing the crack of the hard, red shell as she bit into the spicy cinnamon square. If there was anything better, she hadn’t found it.

She headed back to the full-length bedroom mirror to fuss with her hair a few more times and for reassurances that her outfit—skinny white jeans, snug black t-shirt, large silver hoop earrings—struck the cute, casual, not-trying-too-hard vibe she was going for and that she didn’t need to add a sixteenth wardrobe change to the pile. She turned to examine her image from all sides, satisfied she’d hit her mark. Jason would be coming any minute with his prized DVD of
Ferris Bueller
’
s Day Off—
his favorite Chicago movie and one she’d never seen. It would also be the first time he’d been to her place and her nerves were purring beneath her skin. She ambled back to the living room and let her eyes sweep across it for the hundredth time, trying to see her home through his eyes.

It still had more of the sheen of I-just-graduated-from-college-and-bought-everything-at-IKEA-and-Target than she would have liked, but she figured all things in time. Despite being far from luxurious, the miniscule one bedroom was definitely
her
: the red couch she’d gotten on sale at the Crate and Barrel outlet, the glass coffee table she’d bought for five dollars from a former co-worker who was moving to Japan, now stacked with the latest
Vanity Fair
and a handful of the more respectable celebrity gossip magazines. A vanilla-scented candle in a glass jar bearing a big bold black “N” cast a small, dancing shadow across the table. Her maple-and-wrought-iron DIY bookcases held the requisite literary tomes along with silly tchotchkes from her work travels: a tiny replica of the CN Tower in Toronto, a miniature beer mug from Boston, a golf-ball-sized 42nd Street snow globe from New York City among them (and what would he think of her collection of pop CD’s from the 90s and early 2000’s also lining the shelves, bursting with the dulcet tones of Britney Spears, 98 Degrees and Kelly Clarkson?). Scattered around the entire apartment were framed photos of girls’ nights out and other outings with Brandy and Christine. Pictures with Dina Preston, her roommate from Brown, the fast-talking, foul-mouthed rail-thin New Yorker with long black hair that fanned out like fringe on a shawl whenever she whipped her head around, which was often, were prominent on the wall and lone side table. Natalie made a mental note to call Dina that weekend.

She pulled two wineglasses from the cabinet and quickly washed them before drying them with the last paper towel on the roll. Her phone rang and she squeaked before running to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Yes, Miss Scott, Jason is here,” the doorman droned from downstairs.

“Okay, let him up, thanks,” she said as she went to chew on her nail before remembering her manicure from earlier that day. She paced a little to try and calm herself, jumping at the soft knock at the door. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths before opening it.

He smiled. “Scotty,” he said, going to high-five her.

“Scotty?” she laughed as their hands met. “When’d you come up with that?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I was just thinking about you and I was like, ‘Scotty.’”

She let him pull her into his sinewy body, warm with summer’s humidity. “You’re the only person I would let get away with that.”

“You better,” he said, kissing her. He pulled back and handed her the DVD. “I don’t know if I’ve sufficiently prepared you for the power of Ferris. I mean, this is
the
movie about Chicago. Truly. You sure you ready for this?”

“I think I can handle it,” she said as she dropped the DVD on the kitchen table.

“Next time, we’re gonna watch
Rocky
, which I don’t think I told you is my all-time, number-one favorite movie, ever. Ever.”

“
Rocky
?” she wrinkled her nose. “The boxing movie?”

“Oh, man. A ‘boxing movie,’ she says. It is so much more than a
boxing
movie.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “That so?”

“I mean, yeah, there’s boxing in it, but it’s about . . . going the distance and persevering and having heart and believing in yourself—”

“All that?”

“
And
a love story. Rocky and Adrian. Two people who never thought they’d find love finding it with each other . . . making it through
because
of that love for each other. I’m telling you, Scotty, you might cry.”

“Guess I know what we’re doing next Friday night.”

“For sure,” he winked.

“So, the Chinese should be here in a few minutes.”

He nodded as he started to wander around the tiny living room while she poured them glasses of white wine. “Cool. So, this is Scotty Central, huh?”

“This is it,” she said, handing him a glass of wine. “I can give you the ten-dollar tour.”

They both laughed as he took the wineglass from her. She gave a cursory swipe of her hand across the living room and the balcony before showing him the bathroom and bedroom. He nodded his approval as he took in the surroundings.

“This is nice. It’s you.”

“You’re not going to freak out being so high up, are you?”

“You’ll just have to save me if I do.”

“Let me go put on my cape,” she said.

“You know, I have always had a thing for Wonder Woman.”

“She doesn’t have a cape,” Natalie giggled.

“All right, I’ll let you lasso me up then,” he said as he sat down on the couch. “How long you been here?”

She joined him and took a sip of her wine. “A little over two years. I was in Wrigleyville before, but I always wanted to live in a high-rise. Makes me feel safer.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Well, you never hear about people who live in high-rises being slaughtered in a home invasion.”

“Hard to argue with that one,” he said.

• • •

“All right . . . you never told me what your favorite movie is.”

Natalie swirled the little sip of wine in her glass for a moment. “Well, I like a lot of foreign films. I—I got into them in college . . . like . . . oh, there’s this French one called
Red Lights
that I really like.
Diabolique
is another, and . . . or maybe it’s just that I like French films. . .”

“Yeah, man, what you got against American movies?” he said, winking.

“Well, I . . . let’s just say growing up, I saw plenty of
‘
American’ movies, but they weren’t movies
I
really wanted to see.”

“Huh?”

“My aunt always made my cousins take me to the movies with them whenever they went, so all the ones
I
saw were ones
the
y saw, and they were always just . . . bad.”

“Give me an example,” he said.

“God. I mean, they loved any kind of monster or slasher movie. And action movies.
Lots
of action movies. Brandy and Christine always roll their eyes whenever they mention some, like, chick flick or comedy from back in the day and I have no idea what they’re talking about.” She gulped the last of her wine. “We have lots of movie nights.”

They’d finished watching the movie, and as Jason had predicted, she fell under Ferris’ spell. The perfume of moo shu pork, beef with broccoli, and eggrolls wafted around them, and a few grains of sticky, white rice had dribbled onto the coffee table. Now, they were talking, the TV humming
Simpsons
reruns in the background.

He took a deep breath as he picked up the rice and dropped the grains into the empty eggroll container before quickly wiping down the coffee table with a stray napkin, staring at her with a strange little smile. “You know, besides telling me you’re from a little town in Arkansas and that you’re basically an orphan, you haven’t really told me much about your past.”

She snorted. “Because it’s depressing. Like really depressing.”

Jason cradled his chin in one palm. “Tell me about it.”

She gripped her glass for a moment, wondering how much to say, how much to keep to herself. Her eternal struggle.

“Well,” she sighed, deciding to reveal most, not all, of her tragic origins. “After my parents were killed and my grandparents couldn’t take care of me anymore, I had to go live with my father’s older brother, Zach, his wife, Cheryl, and their twenty kids.”

“Twenty?”

“Well, okay, not twenty, but between the two of them there were eight kids. Then me. Since they had so many, they definitely didn’t want to take me in. Another mouth to feed, you know, that whole thing.”

“But they did,” he said. “Take you in, I mean.”

“Yeah. I was ten. Really, the only reason they even took me in was because of this trust from the Cowboys and trucking company I was supposed to get when I turned eighteen. Well, they got that overturned and went through those almost-seven figures in, I’m not kidding you, six months. And from that first day, they made it clear that I had to ‘earn my keep.’ I had to do most and eventually all of the cooking and cleaning. I shared a room with my three cousins and had to wear their old clothes, and any little money I made from babysitting or whatever little job I was able to scrape together, I had to give to them.”

“Seriously?”

“Uh huh. Despite all that, having to deal with Zach and Cheryl was by far the worst. They were drunks. Like the worst kind of drunks. I mean, they weren’t about drinking themselves quietly into a corner. They drank to fight—with each other, with all of us. Mostly me. . .”

“Damn.”

“Cheryl liked to slap me. A lot. She gave me a black eye when I was twelve but kept me out of school so no one would ask me about it. That’s when the slapping started. Didn’t leave any marks. Zach—he just liked to menace—yell and scream, spit on you, throw things at you.”

“And nobody did anything?” he asked, frowning. “No neighbors, anybody?”

“You have to understand. This was a small town,” Natalie said as she shifted in her seat to face him. “People don’t like getting into each other’s business. Now, they’ll gossip about your business all day long, but they don’t want to actually step in and do anything. You still have to see these people at the post office and the Piggly Wiggly. It’s not like a big city where you can be more . . . anonymous.”

“I guess, but still. . .”

“Once I lived alone, it took me so long to get used to silence. I’d started to think that the sound of broken bottles and somebody screaming curse words at all hours of the day and night were normal.” Natalie snorted as she poured the last few gulps of wine into her glass. “Even though I knew it wasn’t.”

Jason frowned and leaned back against the couch cushions. “When’s the last time you talked to them?”

“Last summer. Cheryl, I guess, Googled me and called to let me know Zach had died. Drove his car into a tree, big surprise. She thought I should have to pay for his funeral. I hung up on her.”

“Wow. Sounds like your aunt has some balls.”

“Yeah, well, that’s Cheryl. Anyway, when I left for college, I never looked back. As far as I’m concerned, Brandy, Christine, and Dina are my family.”

“Dina. That’s your college roommate,” Jason said.

“Yes, from when I was at Brown. Even after I left, we stayed close.”

“So, how does a girl from small town Arkansas wind up in Rhode Island of all places?”

“I always knew I wasn’t going to stay in Braxton. I just . . . I never fit in, you know? I didn’t care about Friday night football games or hanging out in the Dairy Queen parking lot or drinking grain alcohol in a field, or any of that stuff. I . . . it’s funny. We only had one TV in the house, and, of course, I didn’t have any say over it, but there was this one show my cousins really liked that I would sneak in and watch—
Melrose Place
—”

“Aw, man . . . I remember my sister was into that for the longest time. Oh my God, like,
obsessed
. Melrose Mondays. Damn. Why do I remember that?”

“That’s right,” Natalie said, giggling. “Monday nights,
Melrose Place
. Anyway. There was this character, Amanda, and she was just . . . insane. I mean, she was a total beyotch, you know, really mean to everybody, but . . . she wore these
amazing
clothes—you know, really beautiful suits and high heels, and her hair was perfect and her makeup was perfect. And she worked in this advertising agency, and she was always talking about ‘clients’ and ‘copy’ and ‘campaigns.’ I had no idea what any of it meant, but . . . I knew that’s what I wanted—to live in a big city and work in an office and wear pretty clothes and live in a nice, clean, quiet home and go to dinners in fancy restaurants where I couldn’t pronounce anything on the menu and drink wine out of big round glasses and—”