A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [76]
Lizzie pokes her torso out the window. She’s wearing a tiny blue skirt and tan patent-leather boots that go up higher than her knees. To herself, she’s already a costume designer.
“How’s the bigot?” you ask, realizing with chagrin that the sentence has three words.
Lizzie turns to you, flushed. “Are you referring to my mother?”
“Not me.”
“You can’t talk that way in my apartment, Rob,” she says, using the Calm Voice they’ve all been using since you got back from Florida, a voice that leaves you no choice but to test how hard you have to push before it cracks.
“I’m not.” You indicate the fire escape.
“Or on my fire escape.”
“Not yours,” you correct her. “Bix’s, too. Actually, no. The city’s.”
“Fuck you, Rob,” Lizzie says.
“You too,” you say, grinning with satisfaction at the sight of real anger on a human face. It’s been a while.
“Calm down,” Sasha tells Lizzie.
“Excuse me? I should calm down?” Lizzie says. “He’s being a total asshole. Ever since he got back.”
“It’s only been two weeks,” Sasha says.
“I love how they talk about me like I’m not here,” you observe to Drew. “Do they think I’m dead?”
“They think you’re stoned.”
“They’re correct.”
“Me too.” Drew climbs the fire escape until he’s a few stairs above you and perches there. He takes a long breath, savoring it, and you take one too. In Wisconsin, Drew has shot an elk with a bow and arrow, skinned it, cut off the meat into sections, and carried it home in a backpack, wearing snowshoes. Or maybe he was kidding. He and his brothers built a log cabin with their bare hands. He grew up next to a lake, and every morning, even in winter, Drew swam there. Now he swims in the NYU pool, but the chlorine hurts his eyes and it’s not the same, he says, with a ceiling over you. Still, he swims there a lot, especially when he’s bummed or tense or in a fight with Sasha. “You must’ve grown up swimming,” he said when he first heard you were from Florida, and you said, Of course. But the truth is you’ve never liked the water—something only Sasha knows about you.
You lurch from the steps to the other end of the fire escape platform, where a window looks into the little alcove where Bix’s computer lives. Bix is in front of it, dreadlocks thick as cigars, typing messages to other graduate students that they’ll read on their computers, and reading messages they send back. According to Bix, this computer-message-sending is going to be huge—way beyond the telephone. He’s big on predicting the future, and you haven’t really challenged him—maybe because he’s older, maybe because he’s black.
Bix jumps at the sight of you looming outside his window in your baggy jeans and football jersey, which you’ve taken to wearing again, for some reason. “Shit, Rob,” he says, “What are you doing out there?”
“Watching you.”
“You’ve got Lizzie all stressed-out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So come in here and tell her that.”
You climb in through Bix’s window. There’s a Last Judgment poster hanging right over his desk, from the Albi Cathedral. You remember it from your Intro to Art History class last year, a class you loved so much you added art history to your business major. You wonder if Bix is religious.
In the living room Sasha and Lizzie are sitting on the futon couch, looking grim. Drew is still out on the fire escape.
“I’m sorry,” you tell Lizzie.
“It’s okay,” she says, and you know you should leave it there—it’s fine, leave it alone, but some crazy engine inside you won’t let you stop: “I’m sorry your mom is a bigot. I’m sorry Bix has to have a girlfriend from Texas. I’m sorry I’m an asshole. I’m sorry I make you nervous because I tried to kill myself. I’m sorry to get in the way of your nice afternoon.…” Your throat tightens up and your eyes get wet as you watch their faces go from stony to sad, and it’s all kind of moving and sweet except that you’re not completely there—a part of you is a few feet away, or above, thinking, Good, they’ll forgive you, they won’t desert you, and the question