A pane of glass, spanning from floor to ceiling, is all that separates the workout room from the community pool. A barefoot hop, just a skip and a clichéd jump and then there’s the waterfront condos, the ones especially reserved for the family sell and that’s it.
That’s the thought that corners Ben as his breath quickens. His calves tighten, his throat dries, and Ben thinks, that’s all there is. A childhood scamper, the rush of a towel as it sneaks through a closing gate, and suddenly he’s standing in his very own three bedroom up-sell.
Ben calls this the Brody Gavin nightmare.
It’s the nightmare that chases him on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The days he reserves time to work out on-- time to pity men like Brody Gavin.
Brody Gavin, balding, beer-belly Brody, otherwise known as the divorced guy: Brody Gavin, the only inhabitant of 101B and it is the image of Brody, in boxers one size too tight, that runs along with Ben on the tread mill-- an image that seems to appear all the more frequently as the number of days where Ben sleeps alone increase. Brody was, at first, a sight that only appeared in the workout room. He now intrudes upon the weekends. Intrudes upon Ben in the shower and at breakfast. Brody haunts him at the office, and whenever Ben thinks about the brunette on the third floor, Brody is there. He is at his most inescapable in those moments—moments where Ben clears his throat and attempts to talk to Myra with the brown hair, Myra on the third floor, Myra with the legs. Myra, who the card playing ladies twist up their mouths and shake their heads about. They wring their hands about the length of her skirt while muttering mean nothings.
“Who’s she trying to impress, anyway?” They huff and they puff.
“Hold on to your men, ladies. Here she comes.”
And Ben watches as she comes. And he watches as she goes. Watches as she walks from the garage, as she swims in the pool, as she laughs with the maintenance guys. And he jokes to himself, jokes to make it easier, jokes as he runs.
With neighbors like Brody, who needs condoms.
Because, wherever and whenever Ben thinks of meeting somebody, holding somebody, thinks about any body next to his own, he thinks about how badly Brody must hurt in the morning. He thinks about Brody and instead, instead of thinking about the way Myra’s thin hands move when she speaks, he runs. And when Myra matches and holds his eye contact, even for a split second longer than expected, Ben thinks about Brody—waking up as Brody Gavin-- waking up in a house he didn’t decorate. And perhaps worst of all, waking up one morning and no longer knowing the woman who did.
Enter the Brody Gavin Dilemma.
What Ben’s been feeling ever since his girlfriend left-- or since he left his girlfriend--or more accurately: since Ben walked in on a bare assed electrician leaving his girlfriend, who followed closely behind. Ever since then, he has been feeling Brody’s hurt. But Ben’s still trying. Still trying to realize that there are benefits to sleeping alone. Still trying to realize why there are seven pillows and only one Ben.
But nightly, as he lays awake in bed, there’s a girl, only two doors down, that silently dreams. Dreams of kissing and touching, dreams of boys in the day time, boys in the summer time, football boys, Jewish boys, and older boys, especially older boys.
So, this girl, a girl who is consumed by the brand new idea of being consumed, shifts the weight of her backpack, heavy with cosmo magazines, heavy with hairspray, hair brushes and hair pins. She stands up off the seat of her bike, thrusts her weight towards the center of her peddle-pushing feet and shakes her head out vigorously. The ground seems to crumble beneath the pressure of her rubber tire. Her breath shortens and she’s happy for it, she pushes her chest into the warm afternoon air and thinks of the cleavage she’s yet to grow. She thinks of mascara and she begins to cry. But with a single, sweaty hand, she smears that nasty drop off her face. She’s almost home and she’s refusing to cry.
The older women watch as she locks her bike up. And they wring their hands.
“Care Bear, what’s wrong? There are brownies inside.”
But Caroline’s only answer is the muffled sound of her sweatshirt zipper. Because today, Caroline is not Care Bear, nor is she Carrie Berry, she is an eighth grader. And regardless of how similarly her mother-cut bangs resemble the flat edge of a bowl, today, the first day of the eighth grade, Caroline is committed to acting her age. Especially after a twenty minute bike ride of silenced cursing and gentle bargaining. Twenty minutes where Caroline made the official decision to drag down the white flag of surrender and stuff her bra with it. And with a fervor especially reserved for unkissed, thirteen year old girls, Caroline becomes full heartedly committed to accomplishing her mission- her goal in life. So, she throws on a fresh t-shirt, spreads on a new coat of face, pins back her yellow brick hair and runs out the front door.
Caroline runs past the women and their dice. Runs fast enough to turn their poker faces, their curling cigarette smoke, and their home baked goods into a blur. She bee lines for the workout room so quickly that she clumsily tumbles into the third floor lady with a pretty face.
Caroline, who was born to be a good girl, apologizes before she realizes who it is. And once her mind catches up to how fast her short legs were running, she smirks.
“I could make rent awful easy too with breasts like those.” Caroline heard her mother’s voice echo.
Caroline’s mother was certain that this woman, the woman from the third floor, stripped for money and that very thought made Caroline hot in the face. A woman so pretty people paid to see her naked. Caroline blushed, apologized once again, and took off running even faster. Myra laughed. So young and in such a hurry. Myra smiled, waved to the card playing women and headed upstairs. It was a hot day, in the middle of a stagnant September, one of those days that came customary with a blown out sky, a sky that seems to have never heard of clouds before, painted up in a kind of blue that’s almost pompous, pompous and silly like kids in love. Unencumbered, unsuspecting, unprepared. And so pretty to look at, it nearly hurts. So hot she’d left the door open. Thought she’d harness the ocean breeze, the cool blue air and then lay around in it on her one day off. And when she finally reached the inside of her apartment, Myra stretched her arms out over her head and relished in the scent of summer’s last days, decided to leave the door open and began to undress.
Thirty minutes later, she came out of the shower with wet, brown hair clinging closely to her coffee creamer back. And as her hair dropped Easter bunny baskets of water on her tile floor, she found six inches of black and white fur crawl behind the back of her refrigerator. She felt her throat dry. Her eyelids itch, her pupils tighten. She felt the tears form before they fell. It was her one day off. She felt a childhood panic, the feeling of a temper tantrum, of disquiet, the feeling of unsure footing, the feeling of knowing that something was terribly off, that something was somewhere that it most certainly shouldn’t be. And she began to scream. She screamed before she knew it and once she started, she wasn’t able to stop.
She screamed and she screamed. Screamed out of a fear of going nowhere and taking too long to get there-- screamed because she didn’t know how she had ended up dancing, and then screamed because it was hard work and people should know it. She screamed because she hated her boss, hated the neighbors she only pretended to know, hated the faulty engine in her pre owned car, and she screamed finally for the guy who lived a few floors beneath her. Because for the first time in a long time, she had tried to do things traditionally, and slowly, and sweetly and had now, for a number of months, received no response.
And when the first scream, a quieter version of the others, came prancing through Ben’s front window, he closed the blinds and saw the unwelcome image of Brody. He had been annoyed by the girl with poorly cut bangs only a few minutes prior. Women were an unnecessary trouble. And he repeated it once again as the second scream tumbled through the cracks in his blinds. He thought of that young girl again, thought about how fast young girls turn into women, turn into wide open lovers, and then thought about the way those women look when they close their eyes, shake their heads hard, and squeeze out tears like hard earned, handmade juice. He thought of Brody, walked over to the window and closed the blinds one click tighter.
But then there was a third scream, wetter and louder than the others. Ben opened the front door, rolled his eyes at the goldilocks girl outside his door, and started up the stairs. Shrugged his shoulders, tucked his hair behind his ears and just barely dodged the thought of Brody. Ben started with the second story. This time, two at a time. As he approached the third floor, Ben shook Brody hard out of his head.
Caroline, smart for her age, Caroline, puffed up and excited, ran closely behind. Pause. And before Ben knew, Caroline did. She paused half way up the second stair case. Knowing she had lost the battle. And as the music stopped playing dizzily between her ears, she sunk to the step, followed the line of the hand rail with her lazy child spine, felt her size, felt the thin bones of her frame shake silently beneath the weight of her jealous. She thought of her shadow, felt the narrowness of her shoulders and saw how they matched her hips. She felt it all in her stomach, in her stomach, where she folded in the middle like lawn furniture. Sitting there, with the stones of the outside stairs digging deep into the soft skin that peeped out behind the corner of short shorts, she thought of her mother. Imagined the woman’s eyebrows cinch together and her forehead roll up, saw how angry her mother got when she complained of the third floor overnight guests, of the brunette chippy with the impossible body and the horrible way she parked her car. Caroline thought of her mother.
And as the brown haired woman who is forever categorized in the exact way she has to not be, screams and screams in her towel wrapped nakedness, Ben walks through the ajar door. And although Ben, is the kind of man who runs opening through his head several times before approaching, and although, he had genuinely thought, at least on those last few steps, that he could be charming, he says nothing. He quietly and uneventfully slips into Myra’s complicated scene. He quickly and swiftly eradicates the surface source of her screaming, coaxes the ferret from behind the refrigerator, and even, consequently, returns it to the girl child crushed on the outside stair case, but Myra still stands there crying. She is no longer screaming and when he walked outside, she managed to put on both a shirt and pants, but she is not right. And neither is Ben. But Ben thinks, as he stares at her, slightly confused, oddly distanced from women already, that she looks breathtaking, still wet from an afternoon shower, and Ben thinks, as he stares at her, that maybe waking up as Brody isn’t as bad as he may have thought. Because maybe Brody, just maybe Brody, enjoys his boxers one size too small.
A few hours after the ferret returns home, after Ben’s membrane moment, after Myra’s hair is towel dried, after the two of them have taken a purposeful moment to laugh off the ridiculousness of a bizarre weekday, Caroline, who’s already beginning to forget Ben’s too long hair, gets tucked in by a mother who doesn’t mean to be bitter. She gets kissed sweetly, as Care Bear, and not as Caroline, by a woman who would be a lot sweeter and could cut bangs a lot better if she didn’t work two jobs. And an hour after that, the ladies who play poker think about the men they’ve loved and lost, call children and then grandchildren, slip out of their eye glasses and into their comforters. Brody wages on for perhaps twenty minutes more. He stretches, he thinks of the daughters he’ll see on the weekend and slips cheerfully into the center of his own bed. And while the lights turn slowly off throughout the tangerine toned complex, and the blue toned bulbs in the swimming pool begin to sparkle in the darkness that is late evening, Ben is still at Myra’s apartment.
But they don’t kiss that evening. They don’t kiss for many evenings. They know, better than most, that a majority of relationships fail, that most kisses will lead to not kissing. That holding hands will one day lead to empty pockets and divided book cases, so they take their time, they push their foreheads together hard and breath in through their noses. They take those minutes to taste not tasting and even wrestle back and forth about not wrestling. And they think for a minute how awful, and how wonderful it is to not. And it’s not that they’re not willing to, not even that they aren’t prepared to rip their homes apart and move each other in just to move each other out, but for now they’re taking their time. Slowly appreciating these minutes, they days that can hopefully stretch on for weeks where no one fights and voices won’t be raised—where it’ll be about finding out one another’s eating and sleeping habits rather than the power of their emotive right hook. They take their time and they breathe in deeply.
