Fiction Ruined My Family - Jeanne Darst [65]
I got up off the floor and looked around. There was just enough light not to need to turn anything on. The head of his bed was up against the window, whereas mine was against the wall. Interesting. Hadn’t thought of that furniture arrangement. There was a long table coming out of the wall at the kitchen with a miniature Christmas tree on it. No ornaments but the lights were on. The place was fairly unremarkable. An old Chorus Line poster that was in keeping with the Donna Summer thing. He was perhaps a theater major. The difference between the idea of breaking into someone’s apartment and the feeling of actually being in an apartment you have illegally entered is immediate. I was in the middle of a crime, a fairly big one, and it was intense but not enjoyable. I wanted to get my business done and get out. What was my business? I saw his wallet on his nightstand. Interesting that he went to work without his wallet. I had lost so many purses, replaced so many driver’s licenses and identification after drinking that I now left all ID at home when I went out, too. He had about fifty bucks in his wallet, which I left undisturbed even though I could have used it. I wasn’t here to steal anything. I pulled out the driver’s license. He was an okay-looking guy, very average, dark blond hair, dark brown eyes, twenty-eight. Footsteps in the outside hallway made me shove the license back in the wallet. I dropped it on the nightstand and ran into the bathroom and got in the shower. The person passed the apartment. It wasn’t him. Jesus Christ, I thought. I really need to find a hobby.
The reason I had quit my waitressing job at Le Gamin was that I was starting to lose my mind on people, get in terrible fights with customers, and I thought if I don’t get out of this work, “the life” as my father called waitressing, I’ll be doing it forever. I had been waitressing for so long it was the only way I knew how to pay my bills. Acting work was not happening. Who knew if I’d ever write anything decent once I actually acknowledged that writing was an act wherein a physical product was produced and not an art of discourse in the vein of the ancient Greeks. From watching my dad I knew how easy it would be for me to become someone who wasn’t actually finishing anything. I knew I could either get out (stay out, I should say) or go further in.
Jed was all second-act stuff. He’d kicked heroin, he had money, what was there to figure out? He would have liked to work in film, get bigger theater roles, but these didn’t seem to happen for him. He was a wonderful actor, a natural, and this may have been the only pebble in his otherwise clear path of life. It seemed like fighting for something, getting in there and competing, was something he would never even think of doing. Not that it was beneath him, just that it felt disingenuous, given his circumstances. I was terrified of going into this kind of state—a state where to actually want anything seemed insincere, a state of wealth where you needed to always appear grateful, helpful, never desirous. I didn’t want to be someone’s grateful wife. I didn’t want to be a baguette in some asshole’s downtown, Ph.D.-fueled, jack-off nonprofit extravaganza. I was probably going to leave the best friend I had ever had.
I got out of the shower and went back into the main room. I didn’t take the album. I didn’t even think of finding the Donna Summer album and removing it so that he could no longer play it. I just wanted to do one small thing that let him know he was not alone, that there were other people around him. I walked over to the Christmas tree and slid it from the wall to the very end of the table. That should do it. That should let him know he might be drinking too much, he needs to get out more, he should lock his window, he should be more considerate with the ’70s disco, he might be losing it. I opened the front door and quickly jumped out, shut his door, opened my own, and went inside to take a nice, peaceful nap.
A ROOM WITH A POO
WHEN JED AND I broke up after five years,