Josephine Wins Again (5)

A Story of Love and Death | Part 5

Josephine just wants to drink wine, eat cheese, and enjoy a little romance. Somehow, she always succeeds, despite the scams, evictions, violent attacks, and untimely deaths befalling the people around her.

This story is available in eBook and print here.

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Go to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |

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October 24

I wake early in the morning to Mike’s ringtone.

Hello, I hear him say. And then, She what?

I can’t describe the tone for the words; they are spoken in shock and disbelief and horror and misery and pain and I cannot imagine what.

She’s dead?

I hear a thud that I guess is him dropping the phone and then he cries. It’s a wail that turns into sobs and a comic boo hoo hoo. He cries and cries and sniffles and wails and sobs and all I can think is how much like a cartoon he sounds.

A dull excitement shivers across my skin, which turns quickly to self-disgust. The pauses between wails fatten and the sobs grow quieter, and then I hear Mike’s door fly open and his footsteps charge down the stairs and out the front door. Josephine slumbers peacefully. I stare at the ceiling in a purgatory of no thoughts. I remind myself that today we really need to get our Halloween costumes.

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Josephine wakes. We look at each other and maybe we say something about the commotion last night. I don’t say anything about what I heard this morning.

Let’s get out of here, I say. Let’s get brunch.

Josephine nods in agreement. We shower and dress quickly.

Outside, it’s warm in the sun and cool in the shade. The sky is clear and blue. We walk to a crowded restaurant and order brunch. The surrounding hubbub of people is a comfortable blanket.

I order a Bloody Mary. Josephine orders a mimosa; it comes with a little bottle of champagne like you would get on an airplane. Josephine lifts up the bottle and smiles. She is very pretty today. She wears a frilled white shirt over a net-like black skirt, and she looks like a tuxedo waitress on the moon.

How cute, she says, holding up the bottle of champagne.

How is your mimosa?

It is not bad.

May I try a sip?

Josephine hands me the glass and I sip. No, not bad. I hold out my Bloody Mary for her to try, but she shakes her head. Don’t you like Bloody Marys?

No.

I like the Bloody Marys here. I take a sip. They’re manageable, not too large, and they have just the right zing of cocktail sauce and lime.

Our food comes. Each of us has ordered eggs over easy with a different side, I with sausage, she with bacon. We dig in.

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We pay and then I go to the bathroom. When I meet Josephine out front, it feels as though a great deal of time has passed. The sun has gone behind a cloud and the whole world is shaded. Josephine is not smiling. She stares out at the neighboring park. I stare too.

The whisper of cars on distant motorways, the shriek of children, the bark of dogs, the squeak of tennis shoes on asphalt, and the murmur of all these people fades into a single haze of sound, which recedes against our staring. A silence creeps in between us. This is not a good quiet, not a good, happy peace. It is the silence of thoughts moving to dark places.

Do you think Hannah is okay? Josephine asks.

Josephine, I say, gently. Hannah is dead.

How do you know? As she asks it, I realize that this is not a surprise to her, that she’s already prepared herself for this answer.

I heard Mike on the phone this morning.

And he said that she was dead?

Yes.

The silence comes back.

That’s so sad, I say. Poor Hannah. Poor Mike.

Josephine’s eyes grow wet. She makes a face as though she’s just eaten wasabi. This is as close as she comes to tears.

You’ll think I’m stupid, she says, noticing me noticing her.

No, I say, vehemently. I grab her and hold her, and she buries her head in my arm. Her body shakes and then she emerges, fine. I say nothing. I just hold her.

How do you think Hannah died? Josephine asks.

I don’t know. I don’t want to guess. I heard Mike say she was in a coma last night. And you know, Mike did a lot of drugs.

I don’t think Hannah did drugs. I talked to her. Mike smoked weed but she says that she didn’t smoke weed.

I don’t think weed killed her. Maybe she did just die. Maybe it’s possible. Maybe any one of us could die for any reason. I mean—you can always get hit by a car.

Josephine pulls away from me. She lights a cigarette.

That will definitely kill you, I say.

Josephine smiles at me. I smile back. The silence creeps back in.

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Coming up the stairs to Josephine’s apartment in the evening, we tiptoe past Mike’s door and wince at every creaking floorboard. Josephine’s hinges let out an irreverent squeal. We rush inside and slam the door closed behind us.

A party rages in the house next door. Bloated torsos float through the space in the window not covered by blinds. The bass rattles the coins on the box Josephine uses as a table. It feels profane against our silence.

A man roars out the names of challengers: In this corner, from the dirtiest part of New Jersey, Jenny. In this corner, the Irish Stallion!

Maybe it’s for beer pong or Wii Tennis. It happens every ten minutes or so. They are so loud they could be in the room with us, roaring in our ears and cheering as we undress and make love.

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A courtyard separates the two houses, and, as luck or perverse design would have it, Josephine’s bathroom window looks directly onto the partiers’ living room. I discover this when I go to urinate. Mid-deed I look over to see a group of men and women staring at me through the window that is usually covered and dark. The venetian blinds for the bathroom window cover everything except for the exact box of space where my penis is. Using the power of my imagination, I project myself over to their vantage point and see what they see—a hovering pale ass, a penis, and maybe a pair of panicked eyeballs peeking through the crack in the blinds.

Whelp, I flashed the party, I say to Josephine, coming in and settling next to her. The bass rattles a coin from one end of her table all the way to the other. Josephine looks at me quizzically.

I wagged my balls at them. I showed them my ass, I explain.

Oh. Good.

We start to watch a French Bond spoof on my laptop. The party rages on. Amidst the noise there comes a knock on our door, timid. It comes again. We have the lights off for the movie. We lie still and pretend not to hear the knock. It doesn’t come again. We lie there and then Josephine gets up and puts on some clothes. I follow suit. She opens the door and knocks on Mike’s door. He opens it almost immediately.

Hi, Mike says. His head is to the side and his eyes are swollen to slits. He sways like the ground is giving way. Sorry to interrupt. I just. I just wanted to let you know what happened, Josephine. Josephine, Hannah, Hannah died this morning.

I know, Josephine says.

I can’t fucking believe it, Mike says. I can’t fucking believe it. I keep expecting her to come back, be in the kitchen. All her stuff is still here. Please, come in.

He retreats into his room and we follow. I want to be gone, anywhere but here, but I can’t get out. The room is a mess, clothes and bottles and food everywhere, boxes of vinyl records, a stereo system like an arachnid hissing in the corner, and the smell of weed and feminine products. A clay bust of Mike rests on its side in a pile of socks—one of Hannah’s sculptures. The bust grins wickedly.

She was just there lying next to me, Mike says. Just like any other night, and then I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t get her to wake up, she wouldn’t wake up. She was in a coma or something and so I called 911 and then they took her to the hospital and then this morning they told me she was dead.

Mike starts to cry, the comic boo hoo. I put a hand on his shoulder and squeeze. I don’t know what to do. I just want this to end. I want to leave and go back and keep watching the movie. The party rages. The neighbors laugh and scream and the bass rattles the floor. Mike chokes and cries and spits out his sorry words.

We were together for ten years, Mike says. Snot runs down his nose and into his goatee. We were going to get married once we got back on our feet. I’m selling Pokémon cards, you know, Pokémon cards, that’s what I’m doing now to pay the bills, that’s the kind of fucking loser I am. I mean, she drank a lot last night, but I didn’t know she drank that much.

Mike takes a bottle of peach vodka from the milk-crate bed table and eyes the splash of liquid left at the bottom.

She doesn’t drink, he says. Didn’t drink that much. Nine or ten years we’ve been together. I’m sorry, I’m fucking bothering you, I didn’t want to bother you. I just wanted you to know what happened.

The man from the party next door screams out the challengers again. In this corner…! He’s not even calling out names anymore. He’s just yelling.

Those fucking assholes are so loud, Mike says. A bunch of fucking Manayunk assholes, a bunch of fucking bros. It’s two in the morning, it’s gotta be so loud, and you guys have to listen to that shit. I’m sorry for bothering you.

Mike, I say, please, let us know… I let the ending hang. It’s up to his imagination because obviously there’s nothing we can do, and this is just a way of saying sorry. I give him a hug, and he drools on my shoulder, and then Josephine hugs him. We make our slow retreat back to Josephine’s room and put the movie on again. I fall asleep before the ending.