Josephine Wins Again (6)

A Story of Love and Death | Part 6

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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November 3

Someone has drilled a hole in Mike’s door where the doorknob was. A pile of wood chips and sawdust lies on the floor in front of it. Through the door crack, I can see a thin package like a book on the floor.

Curiosity gets the better of me, and I peer through the hole in the door. The room looks the same as it did a week ago—has it been so long?—when we stood there comforting Mike as he slobbered on himself. I see a half-empty package of Deluxe Pretzels on the ironing board that served as their table. I shiver.

What happened to Mike’s door? I ask Josephine. I belly flop onto her bed.

Hannah’s parents come by, Josephine says, head tilted to the side as she unhooks an earring. They wanted to get her stuff, but Mike wasn’t there, and so they asked Jason if they could break the door, and he said yes, so they broke the door so they could get in.

Huh. Have you seen him at all?

No. By the way, you can’t take a shower.

Oh? I raise an eyebrow. Why not?

The roof in the bathroom has fallen.

What?

The roof fell.

I flop out of bed and make the familiar trek to the bathroom. Dust coats the tiles. The shower is an opaque, vertical coffin, and it’s full of about two feet of plaster and rubble. There’s a hole in the ceiling that looks like someone shot a cannon through it.

I return to Josephine’s room and exclaim, Holy shit! I grab Josephine and give her a hug. Holy shit! Imagine if you had been in there, you would have died.

No, I don’t think so.

Well, you would have been hit with a ton of bricks and it would have hurt like hell. I’m starting to be just a little afraid to hang out with you. Everyone around you is getting kicked out of their house or dying, and ceilings are falling down around you.

Yes. Josephine smiles, mysteriously. I am a witch!

I knew it! You’ve come here with your French witchcraft to destroy the American way of life!

Yes! You figured it out.

I rip off my shirt, or, like, yank it off clumsily, and say, But there’s one thing you didn’t count on. My raw sex appeal!

Oh no. Josephine covers her eyes and swoons. I catch her and throw her to the bed.

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We lie in postcoital delirium, each confined to our own thoughts. Josephine traces an idle pattern on my chest. I play with her hair—partly to get it out of my face. Her hair goes and does whatever it wants, and is absolutely fearless in its explorations. Just like her.

Can you breathe? Josephine asks. Her face looms over me like an eclipse.

Yes.

How about now? She shoves a handful of hair over my mouth.

Ak! I blow the hair out of my mouth. I’m going to shave your head.

Good. Usually in Paris, I keep my hair short.

Really?

No.

Did you ever wear your hair straight? I sit up and Josephine sits in my lap. I run my hand through her hair, gently pulling it back and tugging out knots.

I did in college.

Your French equivalent of high school?

I don’t know. Yes. Why not? I used to wear it straight but then I stopped.

Is that when you started smoking? College?

Yes. They get you to start when you are young and stupid and think it is cool, and then you get addicted and so I am addicted.

You should quit. I give her hair a little tug. A strand fights back, poking me in the eyeball.

I’m going to quit. I told you, when I’m thirty. When I am old.

Yeah, you should just quit now.

You see tonight I didn’t smoke one cigarette and you didn’t even notice.

I noticed. Do you want an award? I pretend to hand her a trophy. Would you like a medal? Shall I carve a statue of you out of gold? Here stands Josephine: she bravely didn’t smoke any cigarettes for one evening. Mostly because it was too cold outside.

No, not just because it was cold.

You know smoking doesn’t make you cool. I flick her in the back of the head.

No. I don’t need that because I’m so cool already.

Yes, you’re too perfect. I reach for the brush on the table.

No! Josephine yells. She darts forward and grabs my hand. She claws the brush from my grip and sets it back down on the table.

Whoa, whoa, what’s the matter?

I can only brush my hair when it’s wet. Otherwise, it goes everywhere.

Really? I fluff up a tousle of hair. This isn’t everywhere?

Josephine twists and gives me a look: really?

I drop it.

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That night I get up to go to the bathroom and the hallway is dark. The light bulb has popped again. I feel my way along the banister to the bathroom and then flick on the light. Half asleep, I go through the motions, and then I happen to glance up and see the hole. A face peers down at me, pale and gray—Hannah. I shriek and jerk back, and pee all over the wall and floor. I lean against the wall, heart pounding, still peeing a little, staring at the hole. The face is gone.

Fuck.

My mind is playing tricks on me, my imagination going crazy again. Swearing and grumbling, I wrap up a big wad of toilet paper and clean up the pee as best I can, glancing at the hole from time to time.

I get back to bed and stare at the ceiling. My heart pounds and my adrenaline races. I can still see that face, gray and dead, Hannah staring at me through the hole. I imagine her sitting a few feet away from us, separated by a thin wall and a broken door, sitting on the bed where she died, just sitting there and waiting. The thought fills me with dread. I can’t get it out of my brain. She’s there, she’s over there, sitting on the bed and waiting.

Fragile sunlight is just beginning to speckle the wall when I drift off.

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In the morning, I check the hole in the ceiling—no Hannah, of course. There’s not even enough space for a human to crouch, even if they were twisted up like a corpse. I walk to Mike’s door and hover my hand above the hole where the doorknob should be. I give the door a push. It doesn’t budge. Slowly, I bring my eye to the hole and stare inside. I expect to see Hannah’s eye, expect it to appear suddenly like in a horror film, or to see her sitting on the bed, smiling at me.

The room is empty.

Hannah is dead.

November 5

It is the deep of night and Jake is fighting with his boyfriend again. I hear their feet stomping around and the smash of glass. Someone throws a plate or a bottle. This is a bad fight but not the worst.

Get the fuck out! Jake screams. Get the fuck out of my house!

He’s so loud he might as well be in bed with us. Jake’s boyfriend speaks in a murmur, so I only hear Jake’s point of view.

Be a man, then, if that’s what you want. Get the fuck out, get out of here! Another smash.

Josephine sleeps next to me. She’s a deep sleeper. I wonder how much of this night world she is aware of. Thanks to my nightmares I cannot help but join the denizens of the night. Awake in the old house, as mice scratched their way through the walls, and drunks screamed and fought in the abandoned houses around us. Awake when Mike and Jason squabbled on the staircase. Awake when Jake threw out his last boyfriend with punches and shoves. Awake at the first sobs of Hannah’s death. Just lying in bed, in the dark, awake, and it seems like the whole universe revolves around us, that we are the still center of a human hurricane.

Get out! Get out! Get out! I’ve heard your shit before!

On and on, more yells and cries and thuds and broken things. In the background, the squeak of the washing machine, and Josephine’s gentle breathing. I hold her, try to wrap myself around her, as though my body is a shield and I can protect her from the night.

November 7

It’s First Friday, when the galleries in the Old City neighborhood open up and artists can set up tables along the streets and sell their, uh, masterpieces. I have brought Josephine here after work to show her how cool and artistic the city is—and also to drink the free drinks that the galleries use as a lure. I can’t seem to find any galleries, however, and I can’t quite remember which street they’re supposed to be on.

Here we go, I say, testily, finding a crowded fashion boutique that through the window appears to have a bar. This is what I’m talking about.

I lead Josephine inside. A bell rings and everyone looks at us. I go up to the bar. They are serving pumpkin beers in plastic medicine cups. The bartender gives me two samples and I hand one to Josephine.

So what do we do? Josephine asks. Shop?

Mostly you drink and look at things you’re not going to buy.

We jostle our way back through the crowd and to the exit. As we step through the door, the alarm goes off. I freeze. Everyone else has frozen and is looking at us.

Yeah, could I check your bags? a salesclerk asks.

I open up my backpack and reveal the contents—my laptop, a pair of boxers, sweatpants, and my toiletries bag. I unzip my toiletries bag and show it to the clerk.

It could be the deodorant, the clerk says. Or the condoms. That happened to another guy. Sorry, we had to check.

No worries, I say, zipping up. Another clerk finishes checking Josephine’s purse. It was just the condoms, I say, loudly, calling to the people watching us in the back of the shop. The condoms in my bag set off the alarm.

I take Josephine’s hand and we hurry away.

That was fun, I say. Did you steal something?

No, Josephine says. I should have.

We turn a corner and, more by luck than sense of direction, emerge onto a street crowded with vendors. Top hats, hemp jewelry, vinyl records, used books, brass sculptures, candles made of old shoes—the array of merchandise is dizzying. I stop in front of a booth and admire a series of paintings of women having what I hope is consensual sex with werewolves and aliens.

We duck into a small gallery that’s giving away full-sized beers and maneuver through the crowd to hole up in an inglenook that provides a screen of isolation. A guitarist and a saxophonist perch on a bench by the window, improvising mellow jazz.

This is kind of nice, I say. Almost like being in a bar.

It’s warm here, Josephine says. That is good.

Are you bored?

No.

You need to tell me if you’re bored.

I’m not bored.

I’m sorry this is so boring. I’m sorry we’re not in France, where people are never bored.

Josephine grabs me and gives me a kiss to shut me up.

Have you seen Mike yet? I ask.

No. But his package is gone.

So he finally got his Pokémon card.

The thought of him trading Pokémon cards makes me sad again. I can’t help but fixate on all these little symbols—the shitty coffee, the Pokémon cards, the smell and mess of his room. I use them to confirm the misery of Mike and Hannah’s lives. I find myself imaging scenes that surely never happened: Mike as the kid in the cafeteria that would eat anything for pocket change, sucking a loogie off the table for five bucks. Mike standing alone at the soccer field, shivering in the cold because his parents forgot to pick him up. Mike working at the coffee shop where he made the best damn God-awful, double-brewed coffee, getting fired for having a vomiting fit.

Poor Mike, I say. Poor Hannah.

I feel bad for Mike, Josephine says. But I don’t feel bad for Hannah.

Really? I manage to spill some of my beer as I wave it in surprise. Hold that thought. I squat and wipe up the spill with a tissue. Okay, action.

You heard what Mike said. He said she took those Valiums and then drank so maybe she wanted to die. But even if she didn’t, she did things that would make her die, so it’s her fault. There are other people who don’t do anything to die and still die, and so I don’t feel sorry for Hannah.

That’s harsh.

No, I don’t think so. If she didn’t want to die she shouldn’t have been taking so many drugs and drinking so much. And she should know not to mix it with alcohol.

Sometimes people don’t know any better. She probably started out taking a Valium now and then, and then just kept doing it more and more. Then she started mixing it with alcohol and nothing bad happened so she thought it was fine. And then she kept doing it to the point that it wasn’t fine anymore and she died. This happens all the time. People don’t think that they can die.

No, I think she knew it was bad.

You still smoke, and you know it’s bad. You know it’s going to kill you one day.

That’s different.

Is it?

Yes.

Maybe you won’t die suddenly like that, but it’ll kill you eventually.

No, I’m going to quit before it gets bad.

I give Josephine a hug and I don’t let go for a long time. I say, I don’t know. I think about the circumstances of their lives. Hannah and Mike were so vulnerable. Like, if it was easier to make ends meet and pay the bills, and there wasn’t the stress of eviction, and getting enough to eat, and getting the basic things to survive, then Hannah would still be here.

I don’t think so. She took the drugs, she drank the alcohol. She should have known better, and she’s dead, and I don’t feel sorry for her.

As subtly as I can, I wipe my eyes on my sleeve.

Are you crying? Josephine asks.

Yes.

Her dark eyes swallow me. She asks, What are you thinking?

I’m just thinking. My voice sinks to a bedroom whisper. I’m just thinking of all the times I’ve drunk too much or done too many drugs or just made a really stupid decision. I could have very easily died. I can point to any number of places in my life where death was a possibility because of some stupid fucking thing I did. It would be so easy to drink too much and get hit by a car, or accidentally mix too many pills with vodka.

There was a friend of mine from high school who died in a car accident. He had been drinking and got pulled over by a cop. But he didn’t pull over. He panicked and tried to get away, and wound up driving his car into a cement wall. How scared he must have been. How frightened, to do something like that. And to die with such fear. And just think—that morning was a day like any other and he had no idea, no possible way to know it was the last day of his life.

And my cousin—he died doing a cartwheel on a bridge railing to impress his friends, and he fell off and died. And there’s no way he could have known. He just got up, had breakfast, joked around, went to the bathroom, went to work or school…there are so many times when I could have screwed up and died—what’s the difference? Is it luck? Or did I make less stupid decisions? I could die now for any number of reasons completely out of my control. I could be hit by a bus—that would be so easy here. Or this chimney could fall in right now and kill us both. Or we could be caught in a shootout or shot or stabbed in a mugging or just die for no reason at all, just drop dead and it would be a mystery. It could happen any time, and we can’t ever know.

Yeah, that’s all true, Josephine says. But if you start thinking like that, you’ll just stop living.