Joe

I never really noticed how dirty my apartment building was until I got back from Willowdale. It must be all the traffic, all that pollution turning into a grime that covers every surface in a film.

Every floor, every wall, every outdoor surface has this dusty, sooty feeling to it. It’s not like back home—

I mean, of course New York is my home. But it’s not like in Florida where the ocean breezes seem to scour our little town clean.

I mean, their little town. Not mine. Manhattan is my little town now.

My grandmother’s clothes arrived in crates, but I seem to be kind of running out. I’m afraid to take these to my normal dry cleaner, worried I’ll never get them back again. Maybe I should try handwashing? I am not sure. But I’ve used every outfit at least once now, and summer is in full swing. It’s hot. This mint green wrap is not quite right for the season.

And it’s not quite right for my body, I notice as I try to make the snap parts meet at my waist. Scowling, I suck in my breath and try to make the fabric obey. If I can’t wear this, I’m going to have to go back to my regular clothes. I will have run out of Grandma Ann’s fantastic vintage finds.

Weirdly, that makes me want to cry. Like, actually cry.

That is the problem with being late with my pills. I screwed up this entire cycle and now, even though I’m done with the pills, my period didn’t start yet. The last three days I have felt bloated and overstuffed. My swelling bust line is just the latest symptom of PMS.

“Jeez, forget it,” I huff, slipping back out of the dress and picking out a colorful swing dress in swirls of rose.

This one has absolutely no waistline and goes on without a problem. Yes, I wore it a couple of weeks ago, but hopefully that will just seem like normal rotation. It doesn’t smell weird or anything.

Since I am the first one at the gallery, I take a few minutes to walk around. It’s so nice and peaceful here. Since it’s still early in the week, there shouldn’t be too much to do, just catching up on paperwork. Shipping as usual. Packing and communicating with some of our more high-maintenance artists.

I should be able to design a cooperative show, I realize as I stare at a painting by a artist from Nashville. Maureen Schindler has been getting a lot of attention. She tends to work in shades of blue and green, swirling abstracts that mimic natural shapes. I know for a fact that these colors are extremely popular in Florida right now. If we did a two-gallery show, that could generate some interesting buzz in the trade magazines, bring Dusty some attention.

I know that artists get prickly about the idea of color trends, but they exist. There’s nothing wrong with bringing beauty into a room, I think. And if a person happens to think that lavender is the beauty of the moment they want to live with, who am I to judge? Everything doesn’t have to be a giant, dark spectacle of medieval torture, does it? Sometimes what you really want to live with is a slice of clear sky.

Continuing my solo walk, I read through the cards we place on the wall, small autobiographical notes for the individual artists. The card for Schindler catches my eye, and I take a closer look.

This is strange… Actually, I’m fairly certain this is wrong. This is Julie Mack’s biography. It even mentions her hometown of Davenport, Iowa.

Oh no, Didi, I plead silently. What did you do? This opening was just last week.

“You’re here early,” comes a voice.

I spin around, reflexively trying to hide the card with my body. Martha strides toward me, resplendent in a red and pink polka dot shirt dress.

“I guess the subway gods were looking down on me,” I smile. “I caught the express.”

“Always the humble one,” Martha smirks.

We smile uncomfortably at each other for a few moments before Martha’s features turn stony again.

“I need you to call Dusty,” she informs me with a dismissive shrug. “I got an interesting message from Holly… Please take care of it.”

“Take care of it?” I repeat. “What is there to take care of?”

“Counting on you, thanks!” Martha sings out as she pivots and strides back toward her office. “Oh, and send Didi to me when she comes in, would you? We were supposed to meet yesterday and she was a no-show.”

Martha disappears, closing her office door behind her. I guess our manager-employee development time is over.

Confused, I dial Dusty’s personal cell number. She picks up after four rings, almost letting it go to voicemail.

“Don’t be mad!” she squeaks.

I let my hand open in the air and then drop it against my thigh.

“Dusty? What are you talking about?”

“Well what would you do if you were me?” she answers, clearly panicked.

“What are you talking about?” I repeat.

“If you’re going to yell at me, I’m going to hang up,” Dusty informs me.

Obviously, I am approaching this all wrong. Dusty is my responsibility, so I need to find a way to communicate with her. I try another angle.

“Okay, calm down,” I begin again. “Just take a breath, Dusty. I don’t know what’s going on, okay? Start at the beginning and explain it to me like I’m stupid.”

“I quit,” Dusty says quickly.

My breath catches my throat.

“You quit? How on earth… Did something happen?”

“No! Well, yeah… Remember the gallery opening?”

“Of course I do,” I answer, keeping my voice as even as possible. I do not want to scare her off by letting her hear how annoyed I am.

“Well, I guess there was another gallery there? Like a really big one? And they offered me a job.”

“They offered you a job doing what?”

“Being a gallery person!” she laughs. “Just like you did, JoJo. They said I was a natural… just like you did!”

“Well, I guess they know talent when they see it,” I answer hopelessly, realizing what has happened here.

Dusty is gorgeous, truly. She knows almost nothing about art, but she is a compelling salesperson. She can learn the art. The beauty comes naturally.

“But, Dusty, I need you,” I explain in a rush. “I mean… I can’t run the gallery without you. Not from here.”

“You said you wouldn’t be mad!” she squeaks.

I didn’t say that, I answer silently. I never promised I wouldn’t be mad!

“You know what… I’m sure you’ll be great,” I force myself to say, though it comes out as more of a growl. “When will your last day be?”

“Oh, I left the keys with your mom, is that okay?”

“What?” I gulp. “Dusty… you’re just leaving? You’re just going? Who’s going to be there?”

“That’s why I called,” she says simply, her answer a verbal shrug. “I mean, the gallery isn’t even open until Thursday. Like, can you do it?”

My head spins. I feel like I’m going to be sick. Literally… I feel like I’m going to be sick.

“So… I gotta go,” she says, her voice brightening. “Thanks again for the opportunity, JoJo. You really changed my life! I’m super grateful!”

I just stand there dumbfounded as the line goes dead, then let my hand fall to my side. I can hear voices in the shipping area and head back that way, careful to avoid Martha’s eyeline through her office door window. She thought I would solve the situation, and I do not have a clue.

“Hey, Didi? Can you…oh. Hi, Desi,” I smile wanly. “I thought I heard Didi back here.”

Desi raises her hands and turns in a half circle, pantomiming searching for Didi in the empty room.

“Yeah, ha ha,” I say, unwilling to have this discussion yet again. “You know what, I think I’ll just go check on her. Drag her butt in here.”

Desi raises her eyebrows, which she has plucked into two thin parenthetical shapes.

“That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard you say,” she smirks, looking away.

* * *

Didi doesn’t answer the buzzer, even though I lean on it for what seems like forever. After a while, one of the other tenants comes out, casting me a glaring look as she storms through the door.

“You’re Didi’s friend, right?” she snarls at me. “Don’t you have a key? What the hell!”

Startled, I just slip through the door without responding and head for the elevators. I don’t have a key to the front door, but it didn’t sound like she really wanted me to explain that to her.

Didi lives in one of these cool former factories with a freight elevator and astronomical utility bills. Leaky windows. A truly awful bathroom.

But the views are fantastic, and she is taking over the lease for some securities trader who had to disappear to Singapore suddenly and more or less forever.

So it’s really cool, pretty affordable, and close to the gallery. Perfect. Sometimes I’m a little jealous, even.

Banging on her door with the heel of my hand, I listen carefully for signs of life. When we first got to New York, we actually lived together. That lasted for a year or so before she found three or seven or twelve boyfriends. It was annoying.

“Didi! I’m coming in!” I finally announce. Fishing for the key in my handbag, I undo the deadbolt and let myself in, then immediately wish I hadn’t.

The apartment is trashed. Literally, there are piles of garbage everywhere.

“Didi? Are you here?”

Picking my way carefully between stacked pizza boxes and nearly shredded twelve-packs of Corona, I make my way toward the sofa at the far end. A suspiciously person-shaped lump in the middle slumps toward the sound of my voice.

As the lump moves, the blanket slides away. Didi opens one bleary eye to look at me but it sort of slides back and forth in her eye socket, missing me by a few inches on either side as far as I can tell.

“Aw, hi, Joe Mama,” Didi giggles, lifting her head up and then letting it fall back to the cushion. “What’s up, Buttercup?”

I shake my head in dismay and disgust.

“Didi… You’re late for work.”

She groans and twists, flopping onto her back.

“Oh my God, no way,” she groans. “It’s morning already? I feel like I didn’t sleep at all.”

Tentatively I push the pizza box to the side of the coffee table, hoping to have a seat, but a small cockroach wriggles out from underneath it then darts back inside for safety.

“Gross!” I yell, my stomach heaving.

Immediately I realize that my stomach is heaving, for real. Sprinting, jumping like an Olympic track athlete, I find a path to the bathroom and lock myself inside.

Instantly I’m covered in sweat from head to toe, everything gray, freezing and heaving at the same time. My morning coffee swirls into the toilet bowl, leaving my throat raw and painful.

“JoJo, I need to get in there!” Didi yells, banging on the door.

Weakly, I shuffle toward the door and open it for her, then stand out the way. She limps past me on her leg cast with her arms held out for balance, eyes still half closed. My heart pounds as she does her business, paying no attention to me.

She flushes the toilet and hops to the sink on one foot, leaning heavily on it as she loads her toothbrush with Colgate.

After a couple minutes of deep breathing, my stomach starts to settle, leaving me feeling sticky and shaky. Didi spits out the toothpaste and looks at me in the mirror critically.

“You look like shit,” she observes.

“You don’t look so great yourself,” I reply meekly, gesturing at her scrawny form in just her underwear. “Have you been eating? You really don’t look okay.”

She shrugs one bony shoulder. “Mostly pizza,” she remarks before rinsing out her mouth.

“Ohhhh,” I groan, picturing the pizza box and cockroach all over again. If there were anything left inside me, I’m sure I would heave that up too.

“Seriously, Joe,” she starts again as she reaches to flip on the shower nozzle, “you’re like, all gray. What is wrong with you?”

I tried to organize my thoughts as she steps into the shower to wash off. She’s lucky she has really short hair. She could just take one of those gym class quality showers and be ready to go in ten minutes. With perfectly clear skin and those beautiful high cheekbones, all she needs is some pomade, an eyebrow pencil, and a flick of mascara to be ready.

I used to be jealous of her tomboy body, her strength, the efficiency of her good looks. But as she snaps the shower back off and reaches to grab a towel, I don’t think I am jealous anymore. She looks feral. Shrunken.

“Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately?” I ask her.

She scrubs her hair vigorously with the towel, then wraps it around her middle. That’s not her sense of modesty—she only does it for me.

“This from a woman who just threw up in my toilet?” she remarks snidely.

“Yeah, well…”

“I may have lost a little weight,” she shrugs. “It’s not a big deal. You’ve been gone… since I don’t know when. Weeks? Trying to get around with this cast is more complicated than it looks, Joe.”

Guilt washes through me. Am I being insensitive?

“Okay… but you’re not just eating pizza, right? Maybe a green vegetable here and there?”

“I don’t need you to mother me, Joe,” she sighs dramatically as she ties a patterned blue wrap around her body. I have to admit, clothes hang very nice on her. They seem to disguise what is really going on.

“I’m not mothering you,” I insist.

She stands up straight, brushing her hips with her fingertips. “So is this why you came by here? To chase me into work?”

“Martha is looking for you,” I mumble.

“Ohhhhh…yeah. Shit. I was supposed to meet with her yesterday.”

“That’s what she said.”

Didi grimaces and lets her head tip back so she can stare at the ceiling.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.”

“So, come on, let’s get going,” I suggest.

“She’s totally gonna fire me,” Didi groans.

My mouth pops open. “You don’t really think that?”

With a sigh, Didi lowers her head to look at me, then frowns apologetically. “I guess I have sort of been fucking up.”

My mind goes back to the artist biography on the wall, to Desi and Hannah’s shared critical glances.

“Why don’t you just go in, and let me stay here?” I suggest helpfully. “I can get this place cleaned up in a hurry since I have two good legs. When you get back, we can talk. It’s been a while.”

She offers me a sad smile.

“Sometimes I forget that you are the best,” she murmurs.

“Control freaks get shit done,” I shrug.

With a sigh, she begins hobbling toward the front door, picking her bag up off the small table. I grab a stack of pizza boxes to begin tidying up, and a swarm of fruit flies drift into the air, covering my face and hair immediately. With a gasp, I realize I’m woozy all over again and drop the boxes, hurtling back toward the bathroom.

There’s nothing in my stomach, so I just retch for a couple minutes, my knees wobbly and weak.

“Jeez, Joe, what’s up with you?” Didi asks gently, running a washcloth under the tap and handing it to me so I can wipe my mouth.

“Just go on to work,” I beg, embarrassed by myself. “It’s nothing… Just some crazy PMS. You’re already late. Go.”

“No, you’re sick, sweetie,” she simpers. “You need to take it easy. Do you feel like you have the flu? Fever?”

“I think I’m fine. You have an extra toothbrush?”

Rummaging in a drawer, she drags out a shiny new box and hands it to me.

“At least you know you are not pregnant! I know you’re kind of grossed out by my place, but you can stay here as long as you want to.”

I nod, breathing in slowly through my nostrils.

“Joe? You can’t be pregnant, right? Because you never have sex?”

Defensive, I rip open the toothbrush package and scowl at Didi in the mirror.

“I have sex sometimes,” I inform her, pointing with the brush. “I’m not a nun.”

“Right, you’re just frigid.”

“I’m not… You know what? Let’s just get going.”

“Because you can’t be pregnant?” she continues, needling me. “Right? At all? Are you sure?”

“Didi, come on.”

Straightening, I check myself out in the mirror. I really do wish I had a cleaner dress to wear today. I think I still look okay. I probably do.

Didi leans over to another drawer and rummages around for a second, finally straightening and producing a box with a smirk.

“Why don’t you pee on this stick?” she suggests, pushing it toward me.

“Because I’m not pregnant. I’m on the pill.”

She quirks one eyebrow. “Because you’re on the pill? Not because… you haven’t been having sex?”

“I’m on the pill, Didi,” I repeat, pushing aside the thought of that day and a half where I was not quite timely with my pills.

“So, you have been having sex?”

“You know what? Give it to me,” I reply, snatching it from her.

She leans against the sink with her arms folded, watching my every move as I unwrap the package with fumbling fingers and drop my bottom on the cold toilet seat. It takes a few seconds to convince my body to pee in front of her, but I make it happen just to spite her.

“There, you happy?” I ask as I snap the cap back on the dampened tip.

“I’ll be happy in about two minutes,” she shrugs. “While we wait, why don’t you tell me about who you have been boning?”

Stubbornly, I don’t want to. I have been enjoying this secret all by myself, like a piece of candy that I could keep between my cheek and back teeth, savoring it just a tiny bit at a time. Sturgill has been crossing my mind like a ghost, just dropping into scenes where he doesn’t even seem to belong.

When my grandma’s clothes arrived, I briefly wondered what he thought of these dresses. When I pass by the clinic on my way to the subway, I briefly wonder if he has ever done clinic work in a big city. When I walk to work, I sort of expect him to turn up, just materialize in front of me.

The truth is, being around him was strangely easy. Now that I’m not, I feel like something is missing.

“Well?” Didi continues.

“You remember Dr. Warner?” I start.

Her eyes go wide with shock. “Joe! He’s like ninety years old!”

“No! Wait!” I laugh, holding my hands up. “No… Boss Warner is retired. But his son, Sturgill—”

“Dr. Stud?” she asks incredulously.

“Do people really call him that?” I marvel. “I could have sworn that his nurse called him that, but then I thought, no—”

“No, wait, go back!” she insists. “Are you being serious with me right now? This really happened? You had sex? Actual sex? With Dr. Stud?”

I just shrug mischievously.

Didi’s mouth opens as she processes this information.

“Hold on, did you get a lady treatment?” she asks slowly, her eyes accusing me.

I just shrug again. Didi grabs my upper arm and shakes me.

“No, you have to tell me! Did you? Did you get your lady parts treated?”

I want to hold back, but I have to tell her. Holding all this information inside me is just too much.

“Yes! Yes I did!” I finally admit. “I mean, it was more like dating. Like, he came over. We talked… He came to the gallery opening.”

“Oh, that is a surprise!” she nods avidly. “You know, he never does that. He’s practically a hermit. Everybody kind of hates him for that.”

“Hates him for what?” I ask, confused.

“Well, you know,” she shrugs. “I mean, with the treatments and all, and him being a bachelor, there was a whole line of ladies who thought they had potential. But he just doesn’t date. It’s unprofessional, he says. He is all business.”

Didi glances down at the pregnancy test, then covers it with the palm of her hand.

“So, are you guys a thing? Like, a secret thing? Are you going to go visit him, or just do dirty Skypes or something?”

“Oh! No, it’s nothing like that. It was just a temporary thing, because I was only going to be in town for a minute. He’s not even there anymore.”

“What?”

“He went to Costa Rica to do charity surgeries. Seriously.”

“Are you kidding? He’s gone?”

“Yeah… it’s all right. I mean, it was just a temporary thing. He probably just figures I am one of those million women who are trying to snag a doctor anyway. It’s all right.”

Didi nods slowly, breathing out through her nose. She glances down at her hand meaningfully and I follow her gaze as she removes her palm, leaving the pregnancy test exposed on the edge of the sink.

Two bars.

Holy shit.

I’m having a baby?