Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [26]
In the shower she reviewed the details of last night, trying to recall if Teddy had touched the parts she washed: her wrist, her belly button, her earlobe. He had not touched her excessively. He’d been quiet and polite. The only thing new was her surprise: she’d expected this time to be different. And perhaps worse, she had the feeling that Teddy would not tell Jude what had happened. The night would be lost, a secret between the two of them, as though they’d done something wrong. Only now did it occur to her that they might have. She had done it on a bathroom sink with some guy she didn’t know, in some state she’d never set foot in again. When she did it with guys who knew her, her reputation, her money, her address, at least she was not entirely alone. She would wash off the shame of one weekend with the next.
But she did not want to wash off what had happened last night, and it was because, she decided, she liked Teddy. She had not liked Jeffrey Dougherty or Hamish Macaulay or Bridge. She had only wanted them to like her. With Teddy, though, she didn’t stop when he produced no protection. “Not on me,” he apologized, and she locked her ankles around the fragile length of his torso, as though climbing an unsteady tree, and whispered, “It’s okay.” She’d come so far, the train and all, and Teddy was sweet. He was almost certainly a virgin, disease-free.
Was that it? Did she like Teddy? Perhaps it wasn’t him she’d wanted; she only wanted something to happen. She wanted access into the life Les had left behind, a tunnel out of New York, and now she had it—a mission. Teddy needed her help. When she was dressed, contacts in, teeth brushed, makeup done, she pocketed the address, donned her headphones, and rode the 1 train to the 7 to the 6. Traveling from the Upper West to the Lower East Side could take nearly an hour, but she enjoyed the busy anonymity of the subway. She wondered what Teddy was doing, if he was thinking about her at all, if he’d stayed the night at Jude’s, if Jude was okay. It had been a cold kind of shock to find him facedown in the snow. For a moment, she’d thought he was dead. The evening had been momentous enough already, awkward but complete, and then it had ended on such an unpleasant note. They hadn’t parted on clear terms. She’d wanted to stay with them, make sure that Jude got home all right, but they’d made her get on the train, and with Jude there she and Teddy couldn’t say much but good-bye. What would they have said, if Jude hadn’t been there? And if Teddy hadn’t been there, what would she have said to Jude?
The neighborhood east of Tompkins Square Park was unknown to Eliza. Her mother was the kind of New Yorker who lamented the gentrification of the Lower East Side but, when passing a junkie on Les’s comparatively safe St. Mark’s Place, would grab Eliza’s hand and hurry her by. Eliza burned through two cigarettes while she walked from the Astor Place station, past Les’s building, across Avenues A, B, C (A: you’re Asking for it, B: watch your Back, C: you’re Crazy) and approached D (you’re Dead), watching the addresses, walking purposefully, trying to blend. She turned off her Walkman, kept her ears open. “Wassup, baby girl?” a man called from the top of his steps. But most of Alphabet City was sleeping, bums dozing peacefully in snow-padded alleys and doorways. A spiral of smoke rose out of a metal garbage can, but its effect was more reassuring than spooky. On a clear afternoon like this one she could almost believe the windows had been shot out by stray baseballs. Up ahead, the East River glistened as bluely as Lake Champlain.
On the south side of the street, the buildings were numbered haphazardly. There was no answer at apartment A in the first building she buzzed, and there was no apartment A in the second. The next building was hollowed out—no doors, no windows. She could hear the faint throttle of music, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. In the basement of the second building