And Now You Can Go by Vendela Vida Page A

voice comes on the answering machine: "Are you there? Hello? Are you there? It's Nina. Hello, hello."

    The woman's voice laughs. The red-faced representative makes no move to get up. There's a click and the answering machine rewinds.

    "Who's Nina?" I say into the dark. "Samantha," he says, and sighs. "What?"
    "Her name's Samantha. She calls sometimes and says she's other women. She's messed up." "But who is she?" I look at the candle.
    "We dated in college." "In Austin?"
    "Yeah. I'm sorry about that," he says. He pulls me close to him, but not close enough. The heater starts clanging again.

    "What happened to her?"

    "She kept getting pregnant. We were young then and … She had three abortions in eleven months. It screwed her up."

    "Jesus," I say. "I'm sorry."

    "We didn't listen to the doctors. They'd tell us not to have sex for a week after the operation, and we'd just … that was all a long time ago. When I was into the coke. Twelve years or so."

    I silently do the math.

    "But I thought you were twenty-eight," I say. He sighs. "I lied."
    "Why?"

    "Because you're twenty-two or something." "Twenty-one," I say. "I skipped a grade." "Well, that's even worse. I'm thirty-one." My mouth drops open.
    "I didn't want to scare you." I stare at him.
    "Which grade?" he asks.

    "Second," I say. "That's why my handwriting is so messy. They teach you penmanship in the second grade."

    "Hmm," he says, and then he falls back asleep.

    In the morning, he makes the bed and then makes coffee. He fills my mug so high it spills over when he brings it to me. The mug says "Le Metro" and a map of Paris curves around it. We've resumed our positions: I'm on the futon; he's sitting in his desk chair. He asks if I want to have dinner again that night.

    "Okay," I say. "Nine?" he says.
    "Okay," I agree. "I'll meet you here so I can spy on you and see what you've been up to." I say it like a joke, but he doesn't laugh.

    "Why don't we meet at the fish restaurant on 110th," he says.

    Laugh , I want to say. Please, laugh. I was joking and you are the representative of the world and I need you to laugh .

    But no words come out of my mouth. I grab my coat, the same blue one with the plaid pockets. I kiss him good-bye. With one hand he slips down past my belt, grabs my underwear, and pulls me into him. In his other hand he holds a pack of cigarettes. He's waiting. I leave.

    On my way home I think I see the man with reddish hair and the gun. He's walking down the street, toward me. He's wearing the same leather jacket. To my left is a pharmacy, and one building back is a women's clothing store. Women's clothing, I decide. I run in and duck.

    The shop sells lingerie. I spend almost a half hour there, pretending to admire different bras the saleswoman is pointing out to me. Strapless, wireless, backless, stick-on.

    I think about calling the police. I should call the police , I think. But was it him ?

    "Are you looking for something for a special someone?" the saleswoman asks. Her shirt is way too low-cut and she doesn't need to wear a bra.

    "No," I say. "I'm just looking." I've spent so much time in the store I feel I should buy something. On the counter is a basket full of underwear, on sale. The woman takes my money and wraps up the five-dollar underwear in tissue paper. She wraps it so neatly, as if I've spent four minutes in the store and made a two-hundred-dollar purchase. I love her for this, for the way she wraps it in plum-colored tissue paper.

    "Hey," says Danny as I'm entering the building. "It's the Frisco kid." There's rum on his breath.

    "No one calls it that," I say.

    Upstairs, boxed in the fridge, is a leftover cake with all the roses picked off. I remember it was my roommate's birthday two days ago. I knock on her bedroom door. "Happy birthday!" I say, and hand her the wrapped underwear.

    Susan opens it too quickly. If only she knew all the effort the woman at the store put into the wrapping.

    "But I'm a size small ," she