The Lake

It was winter; or maybe it was spring but it was still winter in Chicago. The phone rang and Dahlia’s eyelids fluttered open. She reached out and pounded on her alarm clock but the ringing persisted. She couldn’t feel the fingers on her left hand, which could’ve been a result of either the cold or of sleeping with her arm crushed beneath her body – she couldn’t tell. The phone was still ringing. Dahlia fumbled around her bedside table knocking three pencils, a plate and The Grapes of Wrath onto the floor.

“Hello?”

Dahlia stretched as she listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. She wiggled one toe out from under her comforter and pressed it against the radiator at the foot of her bed. It felt like the aluminum siding of the shed behind her grandmother’s house in December; something else to call Melvin about.

Dahlia cleared her throat, “Are you sure you’re shitting blood or is your asshole just bleeding?”

“Which would be worse?” came the voice on the other end of the phone.

Dahlia sat up and yawned, “I dunno,” she tucked the phone between her ear and her shoulder and pulled the covers up around her, “It depends. If you’re shitting blood, you’ve probably got an ulcer or some fucked up intestinal virus, if your asshole’s just bleeding then you should think about what activities you’ve engaged in recently that might’ve caused that.”

“What if the activities that might’ve caused my anus to tear are the same activities that are so stressful they’re probably causing an ulcer?”

“Then you’re probably shitting blood through your bleeding asshole,” Dahlia leaned forward and pulled up the blinds.

“Have I told you how charming you are?”

Dahlia shrugged and slumped back against her headboard, “You’re the one who called to talk about your bloody fucking asshole, Asshole.”

Dahlia looked down at her alarm clock; 5:45. A soft blue whisper of sunrise was creeping through the two-foot gap between her building and the building next door, the building that in another hour a demolition crew would arrive with sledgehammers and sandblasters to finish leveling. The building where Mrs. Hernandez’s window used to be level with Dahlia’s and she would watch her through the blinds, vacuuming to The Supremes, doing her best Diana Ross for no one.

“Audrey? Why are you up so early?” Dahlia half-whined into the phone.

“I haven’t gone to bed yet.”

“Wow, usually no one notices their asshole bleeding until they’ve slept it off and sobered up. Mozel tov.”

“So, you don’t think I need call an ambulance then?”

“No.”

“Okay. Goodnight.”

Dahlia closed her phone and set it back on the bedside table. Coffee would be necessary.

The air outside was thin and cold in that way where simply inhaling caused the saliva coating your esophagus to crystallize and Dahlia tried not to choke. Ice crackled under her boots and cars rumbled down Clark Street as they passed her, their headlights glowing in the dissipating darkness.

Café Toulouse was almost deserted; the morning rush never really began until seven. A nervous, teenage cashier stood behind the counter, tapping his fingers against the pastry case.

Dahlia pulled a crumpled ten-dollar bill out of her pocket and set it on the counter, “Café au lait and a cranberry scone?” she told him.

The teenager nodded but didn’t make eye contact. He rang up Dahlia’s order, took the ten and gave her change, “I’ll bring it out,” he said, disappearing behind the espresso machine.

Dahlia slid into a booth next to the window. Yesterday’s Sun Times lay on the table, ruffled, but intact. Dahlia put her elbow on the table and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. She flipped through the classifieds. There was an apartment listing circled in blue marker that read, “Lakeview steal! 2 Bedrooms 1 Bath, laundry onsite, heat included, vintage charm. Only $900/mo! Belmont and Central Park.” Dahlia smiled, she knew what vintage charm meant and she knew that Belmont and Central Park, even by the loosest of definitions, wasn’t Lakeview. She shuffled the paper and pulled out the local section.

“Body pulled from Lake Michigan identified as Northwestern student”

Fucking retards, Dahlia thought as she skimmed the article. Every year some drunk asshole decides to skinny-dip in that glacial fucking mass and every year, someone gets insta-hypothermia and drowns.

The teenage cashier appeared with Dahlia’s breakfast and set it gingerly on the table.

Dahlia looked up, “Thanks.”

The cashier blushed and went back to his post behind the register.

Northwestern students are supposed to be smart too, Dahlia thought, turning back to the article.

“The body was identified this morning as that of 25-year-old Jacob Muzakowski of Park Ridge, IL,” Dahlia put the paper down.

She’d picked Jacob Muzakowski because he’d seemed so harmless. Because he was from Park Ridge and not from Skokie like everyone else she knew. They were fourteen and sitting alone in the pantry of the rec. center where Emily Feldman’s bat mitzvah reception was going on. Downstairs they could hear the incessant beat of the Macarena. They talked giddily about school, the teachers they hated, how they both secretly thought Daniel Polinski’s older brother’s punk rock band was cool, and then Dahlia had kissed him. Jacob was so shocked he didn’t even bother to open his mouth and she had to force her tongue between his petrified lips. Moments later he realized what was happening and kissed her back.

Out of breath and tugging awkwardly at each other’s clothes, Dahlia and Jacob lay down on the pantry floor. It was lit by a singular, naked light-bulb and the tile was sticky and cold, like the floor of a movie theater.

“I’ve only made out once before,” Jacob said.

“Twice,” Dahlia paused, “But they were both Mike Rosenbaum.”

Jacob propped himself up against a shelf stocked with pine-sol and boxes of trash-bags, “So, is he your boyfriend then?”

Dahlia crossed her legs and tucked her hair behind her ears, “No. He broke up with me because I wouldn’t let him get to second base.”

Jacob nodded still catching his breath, “I don’t need to go to second base. I like first base,” he said.

Dahlia smiled and leaned forward. She kissed him again. She didn’t even know what second base was and, in retrospect she was pretty sure she overshot it a little, but she liked Jacob Muzakowski and she’d already decided it would be him, so she unbuckled his belt and blew him. Dahlia had never even attempted such a thing before and the act was appropriately clumsy. Jacob came almost instantly and it was the first time Dahlia felt that taste, something between clam-chowder and Clorox, in the back of her throat.

Jacob pinky-swore he’d never tell a soul and the two left the pantry in shifts so it would look less conspicuous when they reappeared downstairs.

Of course, the next day Jacob told his best friend, Jeff Adler, what had happened and by the end of the week the entire freshman class knew. Dahlia ignored Jacob at school and refused to come to the phone when he called her house after that. He spent the rest of the year slipping notes into her locker, begging for forgiveness, but Dahlia threw most of them away without opening them. When school started back up in the fall Jacob had a new girlfriend and the entire incident seemed forgotten.

Senior year, just before graduation, Jacob asked Dahlia on a date and she politely refused. He called a few times that summer but Dahlia never called back. Graduation was the last time she saw him.

A few months ago Dahlia’s mother had called to make sure she was eating and mentioned that she’d run into Jacob’s mother at Target.

“She asked about you, Honey,” Dahlia’s mother said, “She said Jacob was at Northwestern now, working on his law degree.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She asked for your number so I lied and said you were having phone trouble, it never seemed like you cared much for him. Should I have given it to her? I’m sure I can look her up.”

“No, Ma. I don’t really want Jacob Muzakowski to call me.”

“That’s what I thought. He was always such a strange boy,” Dahlia’s mother said.

Dahlia thought about how her mother would recount this conversation now that Jacob was dead. She’d claim she’d always liked him and that she’d encouraged Dahlia to call him. Whatever.

Dahlia suddenly wasn’t hungry. She pushed her plate away and stood up.

Stupid fucking asshole, Dahlia thought as she walked home with her hands in her pockets. The sun was up now and the underbellies of the clouds had all turned pink. The ice on the pavement was melting and she shuffled her feet not to slip.

The construction crew had arrived and the jack-hammering had begun. Melvin was waving his hands out of the garden apartment window and yelling, “No construction until nine on Saturdays! I already told you mother-fucking cock-sucker mother-fuckers!”

Dahlia pushed her whole body against the door to her building to open it. She dragged her feet up the stairs to the fourth floor, unwrapping her scarf as she went. She unlocked her door, tossed her scarf onto the sofa and sat down on the side of her bed. She picked up her phone, flipped it open and dialed Audrey.

Audrey picked up after the fifth ring, “Didn’t I say I was going to bed?” she asked groggily.

Dahlia sighed, “Did you know they found Jacob Muzakowski’s body in Lake Michigan yesterday?”

There was a long pause. Audrey coughed, “Really? Didn’t you blow that guy when we were like, twelve, and then deny it?”

Dahlia flopped down on her back and stared up at the peeling, once-white paint on her ceiling, “Yeah. Something like that.”

“Well allow me now to congratulate you,” Audrey said, “You’re the only person I know who’s blown a dead guy.”

“Thanks.” Dahlia hung up.

She thought about calling her mother but decided against it. She looked out the window and thought about Mrs. Hernandez and hoped that wherever she lived now she still vacuumed to The Supremes. She thought about Jacob’s painstakingly hand-scrawled letters and what they might have said. She wished she’d bothered to open them.