Miss Misery (9 page)

Who did Cath sleep with last night?

I glanced out the window in a panic, half expecting to see another pair of eyes looking back at me, but it was just my reflection as always. Calm down, I said to myself. There has to be an explanation. This has to be a coincidence.

But Cath called her new boyfriend “D.” That was my initial. And whoever had updated my diary knew my taste in books. Knew me. Why would someone want to imitate me? My life was boring, unproductive, and stalled.

But it was still mine. I read and reread the entry until my eyes started to hurt from staring at the screen. It was creepy, invasive, bizarre. Impossible, even.

“…because hungry is all I ever am these days.”

In an instant, I made up my mind. I signed on to IM, scanned the buddy list, saw what I was looking for, took a deep breath, and did something I had thought I would never do.

I sat back and ran my hands through my hair. I could hear my heart pounding in my chest. She was a firecracker, all right. And it seemed like I had just lit the fuse.

I WALKED UP AND OUT of the subway at First Avenue with my headphones on so not even the hipster panhandler at the top of the stairs could slow me down. All the F-train kids grab their cells and check their messages on the little half-block between Houston and First Street, so I cut across eastward to avoid them. The sun was still out—blazing, actually—and it seemed that capri pants were back in fashion this year. I must have missed the memo. As I walked past the taxi-driver curry stands and housing-project gardens of First Street, I tried to imagine what I was walking into. How to play the meeting? Pretend I know nothing? Leer like I know everything? I was wearing a non-ironic softball-team T-shirt, so leering was definitely out. Another thing: It was five thirty in the afternoon. Should I drink? Well, duh, yeah. But she was twenty-two years old. Would I get in trouble? Was I already in trouble? What if the Library didn't make Tom Collinses?

I paused in front of Nice Guy Eddie's and took my headphones off. Beenie Man was blaring out of at least six different car windows. A cocker spaniel wearing a beret had taken its owner out for a walk. Across the street in front of the Mercury Lounge another band wearing corduroy jeans that were far too tight was unloading gear and laughing. I was about to do something I'd always never wanted. Or something like that. I took a breath, smoothed out my T-shirt, turned the corner, and walked into the bar.

The air-conditioning was on, which was nice, but it wasn't working, which wasn't. The dark-haired bartender in the tattoos and tank top was on duty (as opposed to the blonde one with the tattoos and tank top), and she gave me her usual look, which roughly translated as “I would like to step on your brittle bones if only the satisfaction it would give me weren't so fleeting.” There were some regulars at the bar bullshitting and reading the
New York Press.
Echo & the Bunnymen were on the jukebox. The tables at the back were empty.

“What do you need?” asked the killer without making eye contact.

“I'm meeting someone,” I said for no conceivable good reason.

“Good for you,” she said. And walked away.

“No, no,” I called out. “I'll have a beer. Um. A Yuengling.”

She poured the pint for me sloppily, letting the foam spill over and leach all over the sticky bar top. I paid her. She didn't give me a buy-back ticket, which was fair enough for me being a dope. I glanced at the Centipede machine and took a seat in the back.

I drank half of my beer without noticing it. I wondered who was updating my journal. I tried to picture him: A lunatic? A friend? A vengeful editor? Whoever he was, my imagination seemed to feel strongly that he had a beard. Was he posting from his apartment? His penthouse? Kinko's? Maybe he was doing it right now, daydreaming about the VIP room at Lit, his greasy fingers flitting over the silver keyboard of a brand-new PowerBook on the first floor of the Apple Store on Prince, where all the homeless people, supermodels, and Italian tourists check their Hotmail accounts. It was a nice image, one that almost kept me from noticing (a) the people walking into the bar and(b) the fact that the clouds had shifted, leaving the blisteringly bright sunlight an unimpeded avenue straight from the front window to my eyes. I couldn't wear sunglasses inside—that would be pretentious or sketchy—and I couldn't move because that would be lame. Instead I squinted, thought about what songs I'd put on the jukebox if I weren't too nervous to stand up (“Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others,” “Dream Police,” and “Not That Funny” off of
Tusk
), and waited.

She was now five minutes late, which is a hell of a lot cooler than ten minutes early. Fifteen minutes is also a ridiculously ambitious amount of time to nurse the first beer of the day, but I was giving it the college try. (Literally, of course, the college try would be to chug it through a beer bong within ten seconds of arriving, but I don't like to quibble with myself.) Her diary profile photo was definitely angled, so it was plausible that she could be heavy. I knew that going in. But I also knew that she was someone who loved to laugh, who loved
Norwegian Wood
and the first Orange Juice album. Someone who had hired a naked Samoan belly dancer as a surprise for her own twenty-first-birthday party. Someone who seemed to get what she wanted most of the time. Someone who was standing right in front of me.

“Hey,” she said in a voice pitched somewhere between dubious and flirty.

“Hi,” I said, and squinted. I couldn't see her at all. The sun was too bright. I could see a tuft of black hair and shoulders like ice picks. Whoever she was, she was wearing a tight white pocket T and a pleated black skirt. She also leaned into my booth to give me a half hug, half kiss on the cheek. She smelled of sweat, Right Guard, and cinnamon. I couldn't decide if she was shorter or taller than I had imagined.

“You look different,” she said. “Did you cut your hair?”

“Maybe,” I said. “It could just be the light.” I hadn't expected her to recognize me. What was that about?

“I'm gonna get a drink,” she said sprightly. “Why don't you move to the table in the shade?”

Such a simple solution! I slid across the room to the opposite booth. She didn't sound Canadian, I thought. At least not yet.

When she came back to the table, holding something mixed in a highball glass (was a Tom Collins yellow? I couldn't remember) and another pint for me, I finally managed a decent look at her. Her cheekbones were what I expected; her left arm was ensnared in what looked like a dozen fluorescent club wristbands, there was an
ADMIT ONE
stamp fading on her right hand, and her eyes were dancing. But she looked young. High-school young, and breakable, too—there was a purplish bruise on her left knee and a tic-tac-toe board of red scrapes on her right. Her mouth was twisted into something like a grin, and I realized she was as nervous as I was.

“No,” she said, putting the drinks down. “You look
really
different. Maybe it's the daylight. Maybe you're like Batman!” She giggled and squeezed a lemon wedge into her drink. “I've never known a superhero before.”

She fumbled in her bag for a moment and came up with a bruised pack of Parliaments. “Elsie lets me smoke in here before six as long as I'm quick about it.” She exhaled right in my face. “Do you want one?”

“I don't smoke,” I said before I could catch myself.

There was a pause as she scanned my eyes for the joke, and then she burst out laughing. “Okaaaaay!”

She smoked well—too well, probably, for someone so young. But she had a real flair about it, letting her wrist flounce about just so as she inhaled, flicking the ash without ever looking to see where it was falling. Still, it wasn't what I expected. Miss Misery was slick, in control, alluring, and impossible. Cath Kennedy had a nervous laugh and a tendency to play with her hair. She was just a kid, and I was about to confuse the living Christ out of her.

“So,” I said.

“So,” she said. And clinked her ice cubes. “I was thinking a lot today about what we talked about the other night.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I was. And I think I've decided that I was right.” She took a drink and stared at me.

“OK.”

“You don't remember what we were talking about?”

“Not really. Um. I'm sorry.” Why was I apologizing?

“Man, that must have been better coke than I thought. We were talking about that movie, with Jim Carrey.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
The end of it. Remember?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember that movie.”

“Do you remember what the last line is? After Kate Winslet hears the tape of him complaining about her and she runs out of the apartment and says all this stuff about how it's pointless because they're just going to drive each other crazy and everything's going to end badly? What he says next?”

I took a drink of my beer. Someone at the bar was handing the bartender what seemed to be a wind chime. It tinkled lazily until the killer hushed it with her palm. “I do remember, yeah.”

“He says—”

“‘OK.'”

“Exactly!” She stubbed out her cigarette. “And you think that he meant—”

“He meant OK, like, ‘OK, I'm aware of that. But it's worth it. Let's give it another shot.' Like, ‘Some things are inevitable and meant to be.'”

She snorted. “But why would he say that? They just found out that everything that they feel about each other is a lie—that everything is doomed to repeat itself and be miserable. The ‘OK' was letting her leave.”

I laughed. “No way! That's completely the opposite of what the movie was supposed to be about!”

“You almost had me convinced, dude. Almost. But this morning I called my aunt and she agreed with me. Face it. You're just wrong.”

The jukebox shuddered and “Charlotte Sometimes” by the Cure started playing.

“Dude,” she said. “I love this song.”

I almost said,
I know
, but instead I said, “Cath, I have to tell you something kind of strange.”

She scratched her arm. “Do you have herpes?”

“What? No!”

“OK then. What?”

I laughed and felt like my stomach was itching. “The person you were hanging out with the other night…that wasn't me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Yeah, I don't know what I'm talking about either. But listen: We've never met before.”

“Dude, you're really starting to weird me out.”

“
I'm
weirded out.
I
don't understand it. But I think…well, I don't know what I think. But it's like someone is impersonating me.”

“If that wasn't you, how come you knew how to find me?”

“Because…well, because I read your livejournal and—”

She rolled her eyes. “Eeeeesh.”

“And I read mine, too, and someone has been updating it for me. And it's really creepy, I know, but I need to figure out what's going on.”

She lit another cigarette. “Look, David—I mean, what the fuck? Are you schizo? Seriously.”

“No. I don't think so.”

“Are you bipolar?”

“Look, I'm not lying to you. We've never met before. You said I look different—can't you tell that it wasn't me? That it was someone else?”

“Dude, you look different because it's daylight and you're not wearing leather pants. Also you shaved. But it was fucking you that was in my fucking bed! Jesus!”

“Cath, it wasn't me.”

“If you didn't want to see me again, that's cool, but this mindfuck thing is getting really old.”

“Listen to me: On Saturday night I watched the Mets game in my apartment by myself. I didn't go out. I don't know what to say either, but…”

She was fumbling through her bag now, frantically. I felt it all slipping away; it did sound ludicrous. I could feel my words melting in the humid air of the bar, dribbling all over the walls and floors.

“Look, David.” She pulled out her cell phone and started flipping through the menus. “If you weren't with me on Saturday night, then who the fuck is this?” She thrust the phone into my face. There was a photo on the screen with Saturday's date in the bottom corner. It was of me. I had too much product in my hair, too much scruff on my cheeks, and a rolled up five-dollar bill wedged up my nose as I leaned in to snort something off of a red tabletop. But it was me.

I leaned back. “Whoa.”

“Yeah, fucking whoa!” She snatched her phone back. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

It felt like a car accident, really. In the sense that car accidents are those things that you think so much about before they happen—the chaos, the fear, the slow motion—and then when you're actually in one, everything just kind of makes sense. There's a loud noise, maybe. But very little surprise, very little drama. It's just what they are. It's what
happens.
That's what this moment felt like: Weird as it all was, it wasn't surprising. It was just what was happening.

“I don't know what's wrong with me. Maybe something
is
wrong with me.”

“Yeah! Maybe!” She finished her drink.

“Listen,” I said. “Did he—did
I
give you any way to get in touch with me?”

“Yes. You gave me your cell-phone number. Listen—do you have episodes like this a lot?”

“OK,” I said. I felt like MacGyver. “I want you to call me.”

“You're sitting right across from me, fruitcake!”

I took my phone out of my pocket and laid it on the table. “No, really. Just do it. I have to see what happens.”

“Fine,” she said. Her face was flushed, with pink and red splotches across her nose. It looked like the Martian skyline, and it was awfully cute. “Fine.”