Stranger Will (6 page)

William senses Philip and his fake sister even before the ring trails off and the knocking starts. “Don’t answer it,” he tells Julie.

But she does. William dabs his lip with his shirt and pretends to ignore her spite. As the months have passed, he has grown more accustomed to their relationship based on this intentional disregard. At one time, they called these annoyances “cute.” At one time, they playfully slapped one another, made dour faces to mask exasperation. Eventually, bathroom trips, grocery store visits, or backyard smoke breaks became excuses to escape one another. She confessed her hatred of smoke too late, likened the stink to William’s own breath, how it hung for days and dug itself in her clothes, how it was dangerous for the baby. That was Julie’s grand reveal; William was already poisoning the baby with his breath.

In retaliation for the slap, William pulls a cigarette from his pocket and lets it hang from his swelling lip. He has no intention of lighting, and he smiles, knowing that this is not a secret she can steal. When their life was just the two of them, when they were responsible for keeping only each other off the streets, William was at his happiest. He bounces the cigarette between his lips, keeps it moving, keeps in on Julie’s mind.

“Philip,” she says. Her voice begins encouraged by company and ends at the sight of Shelia, who claims a disproportion of the room’s confusion. She’s sick. Her skin holds wetsuit tight, gathered at the front to a flaccid pouch. Her knees bow, even under the lightened weight of her diminished frame.

William cuts between them and takes his own long look. He still sees a dead body.

“William,” Philip says holding Shelia tight at her waist. Although he might like to claim his embrace as a form of emotional support, Philip’s red face and shaking knees expose his physical struggle. “Julie, this is my sister.”

Julie smiles. She approaches Philip, and wipes tears from her cheeks. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“I do,” Philip says, the lie killing him already

Hospitality, embrace—Julie prides herself in these nurturing guises and is appropriately convincing when she smiles and says, “Pleased to meet you,” but William knows the “make yourself at home” comment is show. He knows that when she invites Philip and his fake sister in, asks them about something to drink, and offers a seat in the living room that she acts only in accordance to her role as host. In truth, William knows, Julie cannot distance herself from her own incubating child when looking at Shelia.

“Coffee would be great,” Philip says, widens his smile. He drops his gaze to her stomach. “You look so well.”

Julie returns the smile and turns toward the kitchen. Shelia, her eyes stuck to Julie’s gut, stands to follow. William makes a move to pull her back, but Philip shakes his head and drops to the couch, pulling William down with him.

“Your lip is bleeding.” Philip points to the corresponding area of his own mouth.

“It seems the world is out for me lately,” he says and brings his bandaged hand to his face for additional proof. “Why is this woman in my house?”

“Sister, Will.”

“You don’t have a sister.”

“If the hospital calls I do.” Philip grins. “You’re an emergency contact.”

“Isn’t the emergency room an emergency contact?” William says.

Julie returns with coffee, Shelia trailing. Philip stands to help her. “Thanks,” he says after seating Shelia and accepting a coffee mug with pronounced gratitude.

William refuses his own cup. Instead, he fakes interest in something a room away, biting his fingernails, gritting his teeth, and cracking his toes until Julie returns to the kitchen. Shelia follows close behind. He wants coffee, though; the smell teases.

“She’s a bit out of it right now,” Philip says. “They gave her some pills. Too many consonants to pronounce, and they make her cry. She’ll come down after a while, probably.” Philip sips his coffee. “It’s good,” he yells into the kitchen. He sets the cup down, his face revealing the lie. William sides with Philip’s face—Julie’s coffee is never good—but today, with Shelia in tow, his friend’s compliments mean more than courtesy.

Philip panics with company. Intrusions, like guests can be, are seldom regarded with optimism. Even when he is ready, even when he has had weeks to prepare, he distributes his company among friends while he straightens his last curtain, while he washes his last fork. His mother stayed with him once while exterminators termite-bombed her house. Philip convinced William to mother-sit the first night while he prepared his home. He claimed he had beds to make, carpets to clean, groceries to buy. On another occasion, William took Philip’s little brother in while he had his house painted. He opened his doors to Philip’s cat for the rest of his visit; Philip claiming his brother suffered severe allergies.

“She’s not staying here, Philip.”

He pretends surprise, moving his lips as though he could relay his innocence by their quiver. But it doesn’t convince. William has been prepared for this since the phone call.

“Just one night,” Philip says reaching for the coffee again. “My place isn’t ready.”

“No.” William stretches for reason, thinks of Julie, and accepts a moment of concern. “Julie couldn’t deal with it,” he says. Thinking she’d deliver out of spite the first opportunity she had he adds: “I won’t give her the excuse for a stress-induced labor.” “Don’t think of it as my favor. Think of it as hers.” He directs William’s gaze to the kitchen. Julie and Shelia seem to be arguing over something, but a sudden shared smile calms him.

“She’s got something, William,” he says. “I don’t know what, but it’s there.” He sips the terrible coffee; his smile doesn’t crack.

William tries. He takes a moment to survey the woman and Philip’s brief history with her.
She’s got something
: a mole on her forehead, just to the side and dominating, hours after a life tragedy which means more baggage than Philip’s rose-colored eyes could begin to contemplate, her still-blue skin. Nothing satisfies.

“And when the drugs wear off,” Philip says, “she’ll be able to talk. I’ll bet she’s got some stories.”

William has often teased Philip that a girl only needs a pulse to have him in her pocket. This latest attraction, a girl originally thought to have had no pulse, only strengthens his theory.

“She’s
your
sister,” and when Philip doesn’t respond, William continues. “Think of your past women…” he offers, assuming just the thought of any one of Philip’s previous interests might clue him in to the impending distress this once-mother is sure to bring. He waits a few beats for Philip to pick up on his insinuation, but nothing.

“You’ve kept my family before.”

“What about the dead man from the Merchant house, and his stain we were originally meant to clean?” William says. “You don’t think they’re connected?”

“He has nothing to do with me.”

“I don’t know about Julie,” and before William can heft the burden to her shoulders Philip is yelling, asking her to discuss the matter. Shelia follows.

Before Philip explains the situation—all of it; Shelia’s medications, her circumstances, her history—before they’ve had time to discuss sleeping arrangements and stay durations, toiletries and all the small things, Julie is nodding, spite in her eyes. William sinks further into the couch, displaying his discomfort of the situation with uncharacteristic silence, and Julie already, without knowing anything but her own desires, attacks with malice. “Of course,” she says.

“One night,” William says from the couch.

“As long as you need to stay,” Julie counters, rubbing Shelia’s shoulder.

William’s bitten hand throbs.

“Thank you,” Philip says. He stands from the couch, leans into Julie and hugs her above her stomach. “It’s good to see you, as always.”

Philip stops at William and thanks him on his way out. William understands his gratitude as sincere. Philip is never anything but. Looking into his eyes, though, William can’t help but wish this girl had been dead. He looks for a reason to doubt Philip’s infatuation. He wants to believe that Philip is sending out something small, a tiny thread of doubt and that his intention is for William to recognize the plea and rush in to save him. But he sees only Philip’s glazed eyes.

William steps out the back door, lighting the cigarette as it hangs from his mouth, stressed by subtle breezes.

Chapter Seven

Pigeons invade the air above his home. A few quick pumps and the conversations strapped to their legs and necks would rain down. It hurts him to see all the secrets of the world escape so easily.

He lights a cigarette. The quick inhale dries his mouth, and a stiff breeze breaks through the gauze around his dog bite, turning an open nerve against him.

Rabies, he fears. The world suddenly smells of mold and rust. William laps chalk from his inner cheek, never enough spit, no moisture, his tongue just a suffocated muscle squatting in his mouth. So one cigarette becomes two, two becomes four, and four evolves as the new level of tolerance. Every muscle calms, a sedation he has not felt in months. From now on, anything less than four will forever be false. He dismisses, for the duration of this fourth cigarette, what the feral dog may have planted in him.

A stiff wind rattles the screen door. He flicks the fourth butt far into the yard behind him and captures a final breath of the outside air. He carries the chill inside his lungs to the living room and lets it pour slowly into the heated air of his home.

The two women are quiet. Julie knits a baby blanket with a needle the size of a weapon. Shelia sleeps in a chair, breathes deep, exhales loud. William is relieved to see her sleeping. He considers conversation a temporary solution, and with that option now gone, he relaxes.

“Been out for a while,” Julies says keeping her eyes to her colored thread.

“She’s had a tough morning.” “You,” she says.

“I’ll smoke inside if you want,” William replies, unwinding the gauze from his hand as he turns to the bathroom.

The bite washes free of dirt and ash under the cold faucet, but the skin underneath remains swollen and blue. As William leaves the bathroom, he bumps the wall with his foot, waking Shelia. Julie offers a moment of stern disappointment and shakes her head before returning to her blanket. Shelia takes a few moments to slowly absorb her new world.

William watches Julie twist and flip the blanket around as she knits, as Shelia stares with lust in her eyes–Shelia covering the room in her gaze, bouncing from piles of baby clothes yet to be placed into the nursery, to Julie’s cross-stitch pieces advertising togetherness and family, to William’s shoes at the front door next to Julie’s shoes next to an empty linoleum patch just large enough for a child’s shoes. Shelia yawns, falls back to the pillow.

William swallows two Percocets he stole months ago from Julie’s back-pain stash and re-wraps his hand. He pulls a knot tight against his wrist and considers dulling the pain with cigarette five.

Julie has slowed her knitting and keeps one eye to Shelia. It might be pride, or her instincts sprouting early, telling her to keep watch over this woman without a child of her own. Or the firm stare might indicate a hesitancy to conform to the situation; her anger toward William has subsided, and here she sits now, stuck in her own home and afraid of a stranger. Of course, William hopes for the latter. He hopes Julie will foam when Shelia wakes completely, when she comments about “missing her child enough to…” and out of fear Julie will force the two of them to sleep in shifts.

“Could we keep going?” Julie asks. A dropped her needle in her lap rests wedged between her gut and thigh. “If it were our child, could we be so calm?”

Or Julie could find strength in Shelia’s passivity, unearthing a will strong enough to carry her through the difficult mess after

‘A’ all the way to ‘B’.

“If we had her drugs,” William says.

Julie spreads her hands open, fills her palms with her stomach’s taut skin. The rest of her hangs loose and helplessly obeys her every subtle move. She is a big woman, a trait William has always loved. When they first met, he embraced the aesthetic contrast of skin textures. He wanted to trace the rippled cellulite as it crashed into her smooth stomach. But when Julie started associating these loves as a right of the child, citing “child- bearing hips” and insisting that she ate for the sake of the baby he lost interest. He would imagine her as a thin woman when they had sex. He would wipe away her cheeks, her arms, and pinch her waistline skinny, below the threshold of a healthy child. She became bones held together by just enough skin—thin enough to pass through a wedding ring.

“You know what I mean,” Julie says.

“I know.” William agrees. He claims the space between Julie— giant, motherly Julie—and Shelia—groggy, shivering Shelia— with a silent moment to himself. He tries again to find in Shelia what Philip has not only found but also claimed as an element powerful enough to drive him toward thoughts of a stable future. In many ways, Philip reminds William of himself a few years younger, desperate for a hand grasping his own, a body to fill his bed, a spouse to curb his fear for the future. But now, having cleaned up so many stains, William explores the true impact of a second generation. He turns to his wall, mapped with his own neighborhoods and thinks of his mentor, Mrs. Rose, the leader of the pigeon rings.

They met months ago at the clearing under awkward circumstances: William holding a downed pigeon and Mrs. Rose behind him, having snuck up with passive concern. She asked about the dead pigeons, her dead pigeons. He denied his role at first, despite the telling position: blood on his hands and a second dead bird at his feet. She pressed. He gave in. It was never a personal matter with Mrs. Rose. She simply demanded an explanation to which William answered by blaming domestic issues. Julie. Her brand new pregnancy. His belief that one more child is just one more body that will eventually become a mess. They have been friends since.

“We should get her to bed,” Julie says but makes no motion toward that goal. Pregnancy has forced William strong. He moves everything, now.