Chapter 34…Rooms

"Hey Pat!" I wave at him sitting at our building's lobby desk, reading.

"I borrowed this book on Lincoln's childhood from your study." He holds up his book. "Aunt Bea's got an early dinner brewing because the twins have a thing tonight," he says as I board the elevator. "And Miss Magnolia's upstairs, looking a bit wilted."

I walk through The Rambler, searching for Em, but can't find her anywhere. It's she who finds me, staring into the room I've just named the Sea God room.

"You're out from work early," I say.

"I called in sick today."

This is a sentence I never would've expected to hear from her. Even when she actually was sick, she never missed one class at school. She's also in jeans and an old hoodie from her mom's alma mater and her own namesake, Emory University; yet further proof something's up, although she somehow still makes it look good. She steps in the room, listlessly. "As soon as I woke up today, I went running to Henry. Thank heavens you texted his new address because I would've freaked out if I went to the Rehab and he wasn't there."

I make a note to tell Em about my doing just that last night. But I'll wait because I want to find out about her. "How did you two communicate?"

"He's speaking clearer now. Or my ear is attuned to him better, even though I don't have any affinity for languages like you do. We still had to use the laptop a lot, though, so he could write out his responses when I couldn't catch the words. But holy cow, he's a slow-as-molasses typist. It was probably my impatience to hear what he said that made me listen really, really hard to avoid the typing at all cost." A wispy smile momentarily crosses her face.

Henry didn't say, but of course he wouldn't; this would probably fall under the category of her story to tell. As we were walking down to his waiting carriage—i.e. the institute's van—he only said that a different Leo altogether—i.e. Em—could really use some love right now. I wait for her to explain further, but she doesn't, uncharacteristically.

Equally uncharacteristically, I fill in the silence. "I was going to make this Leif's…Vince's room." I've mostly lost interest in it now.

Em shakes her head, turning to face me. "I'm so confused. The last I heard, you were yelling at him. The first time I've ever seen you yell at anyone."

I have to think back over yesterday to realize that Em wasn't privy to anything that transpired between Leif and me since we left Philadelphia. It's kind of funny that now that I actually do want to talk, I'm hampered by the non-disclosure, which I tell her about, plus my promise to James is in there somewhere, too. I give her a brief rundown, including about the whole fight club thing—I already told her about the racing bets while we were in that restaurant bathroom in Philly—and she asks some questions about it, but otherwise has no visible reaction. I skim over some parts, just saying that I know definitively that there's nothing there on his side. Em is silent in her new and continuing quietness as we look around the room.

"So…you've actually slept in the same bed with him two nights in a row, now?"

"Oui, mademoiselle." I watch her thoughtful look.

"And, there were two sort of…chaste kisses at the rehab, but he didn't, you know, try anything, move it forward?"

"No." Much to my dismay. "Although that first night, in Philly, I don't even remember. I was kind of whacked out with those memories of…well…my parents." I practically pat myself on the back for my openness. "I told you about that yesterday."

"Hmm…" is all Em says.

"Hmm?"

"Well, I'm remembering that girl and the comments she made. And she was kind of like walking sex, wasn't she? In her little outfit and her pair of big..." Em makes a motion at her chest as she wanders off into the walk-in closet and the en suite bathroom and out again as I stay rooted to the spot in the middle of the room. "And he's kind of like walking sex, too. I imagine he's a very sexual guy. And with his jokey stuff about being Prince Charming, maybe you are right, which would be another first—you being right about a guy. I don't know…maybe not, my head is still kind of fuzzy." Clearly. She's being all wispy, not her usual sharp self. "But seeing you two together…it just seems... And he's very attentive to you."

Yeah, but he is to Silent Bob, too, and I would highly doubt he's attracted to him. I feel an increased empathy for that girl from yesterday because I was sort of like the flip side of her coin. She took Leif's sexual attraction to be caring and I took his caring—because I cannot deny that he has shown me care, like one would a child—to be attraction. I'm no less of an idiot than she was. We both saw what we wanted to see.

"Is attraction all about sex?" I go to the side of the bed Leif slept on and have to stop myself from burying my nose in his pillow.

"Hmm…at its best, it's finding a connection and wanting to be close in every way with someone and that's about the closest you can get to another human being. Physically, at least. I almost don't think you can help who you're attracted to, only what you choose to do about it. It's just there or it isn't, although it might come slowly or grow with time. And sex is a huge part of wanting to pair off. Maybe more so with men, generally speaking, or maybe not, I don't know. Speaking of men, I have an idea…" I am heartened to see her face spark up briefly; this new vague Em is disquieting. "…You should do up his room like Doris Day did for Rock Hudson's apartment in that fifties movie, Pillow Talk—all hyper-masculine swinging bachelor pad."

I bark out a snort-laugh. "That thought is so appealing."

For background noise, we often played something from Em's prodigious collection of old movies while we were studying in Palo Alto. I've probably seen, or more precisely, heard Pillow Talka dozen times, it's one of her favorites.

"Oh. I'm just remembering something James said at dinner when you and Leif were away from the table. He said that Leif's never once, as long as he's known him, ever pursued any girl. They certainly flocked around him, though. Wait…There was once, a few years ago, he followed someone, or a pair of someones—a girl or maybe it was two girls—around Philadelphia. But he was too scared to get close enough to talk to them or something. I don't remember the specifics exactly, but James said that was very unlike him. It's like a fog has settled around my brain. I'm so tired." She shakes her head as she glides around the room, ghostlike.

I find myself with his pillow in my hand, I raise it to my nose.

"What's this?" she asks. I put the pillow down and turn to see her sitting on the floor staring intently at Leif's art gift propped against the wall. I tell her that's what I was picking up yesterday and how it came to be and that I have another one tailored for James that he'll open at tomorrow's dinner. I don't tell her I have one for her birthday, too.

"I absolutely hated the graduation gifts I gave James and Leif."

"What! Why? Those briefcases were beautifully-made. I'm sure they both can use them with their new jobs. You obviously spent a lot of money."

"But that's just it. They were very acceptable high-end designer men's bags bought with my parents' money. You would have a cow if you knew how much money. There was no…there was no…me in them, no art, no handcrafting in them, like there is so much you in this gift. Does that make sense? Probably not. It doesn't even make sense to me, because a week ago when I bought the pair of them, I thought they were perfect. But watching them open those gifts that I even paid to have giftwrapped—I didn't even do that myself—right at that outside table with the sunlight that hurt my eyes, with this steaming plate of biscuits and gravy, my favorite breakfast meal, which I couldn't even eat, I was just…embarrassed."

"Merde, Em! All this was going on and I didn't know. You were so quiet." And I was so wrapped up in my stupid fairy tale. I move to stand behind her and lean over to put my hands on her head, gently massaging it. "Are you sure you're okay? You're worrying me, chica."

She lifts her head up to look at me, saying, "Yes. I'm fine, just tired." I lean further down to kiss her on the forehead and that's when I feel someone else in the room. I turn to see Bea watching from the door with a beatific smile on her face.

"Pat said you were home, but I didn't even hear you come in. You two want an early bird dinner?"

Em begs off, claiming the need for a nap and I have no appetite, but want a distraction from my thoughts so I follow Bea to her huge kitchen table. In addition to Pat, J and Heid are there, having just finished their last exams for the semester. They're both studying computer science and graphic design. I pick at my food as they talk about a series of end-of-the-school-year parties they're DJing around NYU this week and invite me to them.

I give them a vague, "We'll see," until they say that Adam will be filming at some of them as part of his senior film project for next year. Before they scarf up Bea's food and run off, they promise to text me the details for the one tonight.

I relay a breezy recap of my first day to Bea and Pat. Bea especially loves that my work nickname is LL Cool J. She asks me about the menu for my birthday and I tell her I don't really care. "Come on! Give me some idea. I've been trying to make you things you like so you'll gain that weight back you always lose when you travel."

"Am I too skinny?" I ask her.

"Yes. You look like a little boy." I hear an echo of Professor Zhang-Lei saying the same thing to me when she and Gardner-san met me at the San Francisco airport. And then Vince today, of course.

"Don't listen to her. One can never be too rich or too thin," Pat says.

I try to stuff down everything on my plate anyway.

"Are you finally going to move into that room your grandmother started for you?" Bea asks.

Before I consider the ramifications of this, I tell them, "No. I was going to make that Leif's room." Key word: was. I look up having cleaned my plate to see Cheshire cat grins on both their faces.

"No! That was Granddad's doing! Leif's sort of homeless right now, staying on a boat and…and Henry told him he could come stay at The Rambler!" I really need to get control of my new brain-to-mouth ratio.

Bea stage whispers to Pat, "They were holding hands last night." The grins get wider. And more evil.

"No! It's not like that. He was just…comforting me!" I see it for what it was now. I really need to wipe those grins off their faces. I blurt out, "I kind of was interested in Adam anyway. From the dance party. He asked me out that night, you know." What is wrong with me?

"Oh?" they say at the same time, reminding me of the twins. Now two pair of wiggling eyebrows accompanies the grins. What have I done?

"Our Petite Hibou is growing up!" Pat says, joke sniffling and making a show of dabbing at fake tears. I press my mouth together so I won't dig myself deeper into this hole. I liked the quiet me a whole lot better.

It is Pat who puts a damper on their line of evil.

He turns to Bea. "Speaking of growing up, when are you going to tell the twins about Henry? You said you wanted to wait until after their finals. Now it's after their finals."

She jumps up to clear off the table as I crow in my best smartass voice, "Yeah, Bea. You should tell them." It still kind of smarts that I was kept in the dark.

Pat now glares at me across the table. "Don't you get up on your high horse, missy! You and I spent a lot of time together last week and you didn't tell me."

Bea's smirking at me from the sink. Her expression alone easily translates to, See? See how easy it is to get caught up in not telling?

"That's because you had just gotten back and Bea said she would take care of it!" Bea agreed to tell everyone in the building—many of whom have become a kind of extended family—and the last I'd heard, only Pat and Mrs. Babic know.

"I don't care what scheme you two decided upon! These should've been the first words out of both your mouths—'Hey Pat, glad you're back from your Grand Jete around Europe, Henry's had a stroke!'" Okay, yeah, he does have a point and I feel immediately guilty because I know how that feels.

So in yet another defensive move, one I call The Classic Redirect, I blurt out, "Want to help me with doing up that bedroom?"

In the end, I'm glad for my last bout of defensive blurting because it leads me to finding some treasures. Rather than scouring the apartment for furniture, Bea takes us into the study. She climbs the wooden library ladder to pull out some notebooks from the upper shelves that my grandmother had made cataloging every bolt of fabric, rug, every major artwork and important trinket, and each piece of furniture she'd collected from around the world. Knowing my grandmother, I imagine these notebooks were less about cataloging her purchases, and more about remembering the people she met. She said that it was often through the markets that she made connections in a new town—found out where to volunteer, got to know the women. On many of these jaunts in the 2000's, I was with her.

These notebooks go back for decades and most of them feature a photo of the item itself with the shopkeeper or artist with Rosamunde, all captioned like, "Clignancourt, Paris France, September 1969," "Plainpalais, Geneva, Switzerland, July, 1973," "Cikrikcilar Yokusu market, Ankara, Turkey, August, 1978," "Fountain Square, Baku, Azerbaijan, April, 1996," "Shah Alam, Lahore, Pakistan, June, 1988."

Below most of the pictures are little notes in grand-mere's handwriting such as the one accompanying the Lahore photo, "The most delightful Bhaat family has run this market stall for three generations now. The oldest girl, Mahira, eighteen, did the embroidery and beading on this cloth—a true artist!"

Some of the pictures also have Henry. As we three flip through the notebooks, Em comes into the room exclaiming, "I miss everything when I'm sleeping!" She joins us all sprawled on top of the desk and leans over Pat's shoulder to look at his book.

When I happen upon a picture of my dad as a little boy while they were in Cologne, taking apart a toy train with a little German girl named Susi—according to my grandmother's caption—right next to one where they're in Algiers, I snap the album shut.

"I don't recognize a lot of this stuff though. Where is it all?" I somehow croak out the words through the burning in my throat.

Bea rifles through the desk pulling out a huge janitor-sized key ring. "Follow me!" Like ducklings, we three do, down several halls I rarely go down, all the way to a back corner of this sprawling apartment. She stops at a door that I've never noticed before because it's painted trompe l'oeil-style to look like the wood molding along the wall. Clearly, I've not been paying enough attention. Bea opens it.

It's a large storage room with all kinds of cool stuff. I immediately spot a table inlaid with what looks like shells that will be a perfect desk in the Sea God room.

Bea opens another door within the storage room, saying, "I can't believe I forgot about this." We all walk inside. There are rows and rows of hanging racks. With beautiful vintage dresses. Ball gowns mostly. Em's expression seems as if she's discovered the Holy Grail as she pulls out a red dress.

"I'm almost positive this is Schiaparelli!" She puts it back and pulls out another one. "And Dior's New Look!"

Pat joins her with a mirroring expression of awe. "Some of these would've even been before Rosamunde's time. They belong in a museum!"

When it becomes clear that we are not tearing them away from these clothes, it is Bea and I alone who move the furniture I choose into the Sea God room. I even find a couple bolts of cloth that would be perfect to be made into curtains—both for sheers and a heavier one over that. Bea helps me measure the window and says Mrs. Babic can sew up the curtains. She disappears with the measurements and the cloth as I meander around the storage room some more, listening to Em and Pat exclaiming in the dress room.

I will look closer at the clothes later, I'm sure, but it gave my heart such a pang seeing all of them that I just can't go in there right now. In the back of this room, behind a wardrobe and under some rolled up rugs, I spot an intricately carved wood chair inlaid with metal and stones. It's kind of hideous, really, but what catches my eye is that it's sort of throne-like, too. With stylized Hellenic dolphins carved into it. And seahorses. And yes, there is a trident on the back of it. It is a chair for a sea god. I start to drag it toward the hall—it's really heavy—when Bea comes back in to help me. She says it would be a perfect chair for the study, so instead of taking it to the Sea God room, we heft it there, placing it under the window in the study where Henry's club chair used to be. The new chair and my own flank my Grandmother's porter's chair. Bea and I stare at it.

"That's kind of beautifully heinous, isn't it?" she says, laughing.

"Truer words were never spoken," I snort. "Don't you want your own chair in here, Bea?"

"No. I always claimed the sofa as mine when we all sat in here because there's room for Petal, too." she says wistfully, collapsing on the sofa, Petal jumping up next to her.

I climb the ladder to start putting the first of the notebooks away on the shelves where Bea got them. I will come back to these, too, when I'm alone. I know I'll find some more pictures of my dad in here. And probably my mom, too. And me. Later. I can't look now.

"You know what's funny?" Bea says pulling me out of my reveries. "Remember how your grandmother did up that yellow room next to yours like a year before you went off to Stanford? And then you met Em and it was like Rosamunde had done that room just for her?"

"Uh huh. She always needed a new project and did it when we came up here from D.C. over a couple weekends."

"Well, I'm just thinking that it's like she'd created that room for Vince. Before you ever knew him. I know it was supposed to be your new room, but that bathroom tile is like waves, the color of the room like the deepest part of the ocean. I don't know." She's quiet for a long time as I try to take this in.

"It just seems like cycles keep repeating lately. Or something. And you know what Henry always says about that."

Yeah. Yeah, I do.

It is when I'm climbing down the ladder for the last time that I ask, "Bea, do you think I'm attractive. Like, I know I'm not…you know, hot, or anything… sexy…but am I too…you know…gawky and spindly? Like, for how boys might like…" When I'm on solid ground again, I turn to face her and can't finish my stammering sentence because of the look of abject horror on her face. I'm rooted to the spot wondering if I have camel spiders crawling on my head.

"One week! You couldn't have waited one stupid week to ask me that!" I just gape back at her because What? "Dammit!" She closes her eyes and shakes her head, as if in pain. When she finally opens them again—still gaping here!—she heaves out a heavy sigh.

"When you all came back to the States for you to enter school in D.C. at the beginning of your adolescence, I told your grandmother that there was no way you would be able to circumvent the lure of American pop culture, not to mention peer pressure, and would soon be worrying if you were pretty enough or had the right gear or whatever.

"She said that you'd seen firsthand and more importantly, understood the devastating impact of women and girls valued only for how men viewed them the world over and that you were evolved enough and cognizant enough to ingest pop culture without succumbing to the baser part of it. And she was right; you kept your core self through high school. And then when you went to California and started rooming with Em at sixteen-years-old, I took one look at her on her first visit here with all her designer this and that and kewpie doll Southern self and well…I figured that her pushy personality coupled with your quiet compliance would lead you down the dark side. But even that didn't change you for anything but the better."

As I remain silently standing next to the library ladder, she just keeps going, clearly on a roll. "And now you come home for a few weeks and you're asking if you're hot? It would be one thing if you wanted to explore your sexuality or whatever or express your own inner hotness, but just to sort of wonder how boys might possibly view you?" She draws in a deep breath, the horror on her face dawning anew. "Oh my God, oh my God, this isn't because I called you too skinny is it? I was kidding! You know I only do that because I love when people eat my food. And Pat's only kidding about never being too rich or too thin."

We start laughing at the same time both of us saying, "No he's not!"

Thankfully, this derails her diatribe. "Please go sit down." After I do, she says, "Sorry to go off, I just don't want you to be like me. Like I was. Whose only self-worth was related to how I pleased one…well, that's another story. Now my self-worth is wrapped up in music and cooking and my family, which is much healthier. Anyway, why did you ask me that?"

I'm not about to say. For one, she'll never forgive Vince. Plus, I don't want to start her off again. Also, I feel so stupid, like I've let down my grandmother. So I shrug and just contemplate this and finally catch what she said that I didn't understand.

"You said a week. Why would it have mattered if I'd asked you that next week?"

"Oh, because I made a bet with your grandmother." Of course she did. "I bet her you wouldn't make it through your teenage years without succumbing to wondering if you were good enough in some external, passive way. Like how your body was or if you were pretty enough. She bet you would. A week from now you'll turn twenty."

My grandmother shouldn't have bet with me. She should've thrown down with Vince.

"But hey. That means you won."

"Yeah, but some bets you just don't want to win."

Em stays in that dress room far into the evening, Pat having long since gone home. After tacking up a corkboard over the desk, and the graduation art near the door, a mirror over the dresser, finally, when the Sea God room is mostly done, except for needing some artwork over the bed, I join her. She is sitting on the floor holding a peach-colored gown with an organza overlay that looks like one Lana Turner or Deborah Kerr would've been swanning around in in one of Em's old movies. She doesn't look up as I sit next to her in silence. We sit like this for I don't know how long and I can practically see thoughts and questions colliding around Em's head, which leads me to a new observation.

"Is this what it's like, what it's been like for you being my friend, rooming with me for four years? Where you're practically dying for me to talk? To tell you what I'm thinking?"

Em answers quietly, "Pretty much, yeah, especially at first because I'd never known anyone like you before. But then you get used to it."

"I never knew until now how patient you'd have to be or how hard it must've been to be my friend." Or my grandparents. Or aunt. I have a brand new heightened understanding of Henry not telling me anything last week, now that I see it from this angle. What right did I have to be upset with him? Definitely a pot and kettle situation. No wonder I don't have many close friends. I don't talk much, keep everything inside. Or at least I did.

Still staring at the dress, Em says, "It ends up being so worth it, though. Because when you finally would talk, you'd come out with something new and insightful and make me see the world slightly differently. I'd kind of look forward to what you'd say because it would be interesting." She pauses for an eternity.

"In fact, what I've been thinking about, expanding on, is something you said to me after one of your bouts of pensiveness. Actually, you've said this several times, in several ways, but one I'm thinking about in particular is when you first started your Chinese classes and you went quiet, like, for days. Then you said that your friend from high school, Ito, had given you a good base in Chinese words, but that you'd never gotten the structure of the Chinese language."

I do remember that. I'd taught Ito French and helped him perfect his English, too. He'd taught me his native Japanese and some Chinese, but it wasn't until I started taking classes at Stanford that I realized I didn't have the structure of it yet, like I had in Japanese. And it bothered the hell out of me.

"I don't think I ever understood that until now, but I've been looking at the structure of these dresses and pondering the structure of their intricate design and I've been missing a key component of…I'm not sure yet...Something. And maybe before I talk about it, I need to think about it some more, you know?" She turns to smile at me. "Like you."

Like the old me. "Gosh, we're a pair, aren't we? While you're pondering structures, how about we go out to a party that J and Heid are DJing tonight? An NYU thing."

Em stares at me. Hard. "You are asking me to go to a party? A college one. On a Monday night."

"Yeah, I guess I am." Definitely the new me. "And in answer to your unspoken question, no, I've not been taken over by aliens." She doesn't look so sure. "I have an ulterior motive. Adam's going to be there."

"Ohhhh..." Em somehow turns this one little exclamation into ten syllables as she gets up from the floor. "You know, the one area you never had any insight is with boys. Like, none. Zilcho. Nada. You know, by my count, you've actually been on four dates with guys from your study groups. Seriously, Elle…what boy schedules study time at a romantic Italian restaurant? I told you then, but you wouldn't believe me, only saying it was appropriate because you were in a European history class with him. You only saw what you wanted to see."

Yeah, I understand this only too well now.

I shrug. "Maybe I aim to change the structure of that."

Her answering grin almost scares me.