Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [17]
Teddy looked petrified only for a moment, then hooked an arm over her shoulder. He nodded. “Me, too. You, too.”
“This your boyfriend or something?”
“His name’s Teddy,” said Eliza.
The guy laughed bitterly and emptied the rest of his beer. “You kids have fun,” he said and made his way past them to the keg.
“Thanks, baby,” she whispered. “That guy was ready to maul me.” The line for the keg nudged them farther into the brightly lit bathroom. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Let’s just go.”
“You look sort of ruffled. What happened to you?”
A girl, drunk and laughing, sat on the toilet with her underwear around her knees. Behind her, three or four people bent purposefully over the bathtub, trying to extract the last frothy drops from the keg. The guy who’d been talking to Eliza announced that it was dry. The crowd, disappointed, muscled back out into the hall, pushing Eliza up against the sink. She slipped off her backpack and hopped onto the counter, Teddy jammed against her knees, until everyone slowly filed out of the room, leaving the two of them alone. On the way out, the guy turned off the light and pulled the door shut.
“We should go,” Teddy said, but he didn’t move to turn the light back on.
She said, “My train doesn’t leave till midnight,” although she wasn’t sure what time it was now. She took a swig from her cup. She was drunk, she knew, but not beyond reason. Someone tried the handle, but the door didn’t budge.
“I guess it’s locked?” she whispered.
“I can’t see, anyway,” Teddy said. “My contact fell out and I can’t get it back in.”
“Where is it?”
“Right here, in my hand.”
Eliza put down her cup. “You’re going to lose it. Let me see it.” She was still sitting on the rim of the sink, her knees grazing his hips. She felt him find her elbow through her coat and then her hand. He placed the lens in the middle of her palm. It felt like a wet breath. She popped it in her mouth as though she were swallowing a pill, and let it soak on her tongue.
“What are you doing?”
“I put it in my mouth.” Her voice slurred around the lens. “It keeps it moist.”
“Oh. I just got them. I’m still getting used to them.”
“Come here. Which eye is it?”
He led her hand to his right eyelid. His lashes were stiff with cold. Holding him by the ears, she eased his head back, then spit the salty lens onto her fingertip. She had saline solution in her backpack, but she didn’t want to turn on the light. She liked the idea of her saliva lubricating this kid’s eyeball. Gingerly she drew back his lid and fit it over his eye.
“Quit squirming.”
“Sorry.”
“Is it in?”
After a moment, Teddy said, “I think so.”
On the other side of the door, someone else jiggled the knob, then gave up. The floor was vibrating with music and a few feet away people were laughing. She was afraid Teddy was about to turn on the light. Instead he said, “You live in New York, right?”
He told her the story. He was moving there. He had a half brother named Johnny in Alphabet City. Teddy had no money; Johnny had no phone. Could she take a message to him?
Eliza was the one to turn on the light. For several seconds they blinked at each other, as though surprised that the other was made of pigment and flesh. From her backpack she withdrew a pen and a sheet of the stationery she’d taken from the inn, and he wrote down his brother’s address and Jude’s number. He told her to tell Johnny to call him there. She liked the idea of carrying a message, riding through the snowy night to deliver urgent news to a stranger. She wrote down her own phone number and tore it off, and Teddy put it in his pocket. “You’re not going to lose that, are you?” It was suddenly something that was important to her, not being lost to him. If she held on to Teddy, she could hold on to Jude. “Why don’t you just come back with me tonight? I’ll cover your ticket.”
“What about Jude?”
“We’ll bring him with us. He can live with his dad. It would be perfect!”
Teddy turned his eyes toward the empty red cups littering the bathtub. Here it was—a free ticket, dropped into his lap.