Bridget McFadden

Bridget McFadden lives in the Hudson Valley. Her work has appeared in Entropy, BlazeVox, and Brokelyn. You can read more at bridgetcmcfadden.com.

Lola’s Girls

“Tesla was the man who actually discovered electrical currents, even through everyone says it was Ben Franklin,” said Dr. A as he and Bria strolled arm-in-arm up Sixth Avenue.

“Historians make a big deal about how he allegedly talked to pigeons, but I think they’re exaggerating. Maybe he enjoyed an occasional chat with a pigeon, but he didn’t talk to them all the time.” Dr. A identified with stark raving lunatics. “There’s actually a street corner named after him somewhere around here…” They walked one block farther north, and approached Bryant Park when Bria glanced skyward and saw the street sign: Nikola Tesla Avenue. She jostled Dr. A’s arm and nodded to the sign.

“Did you know it was right here?” Bria asked.

They walked closer to the park. Its antique wooden carousal was in full swing on this sunny summer day. A dozen screeching toddlers bobbing astride snickering ponies and one deranged frog.

“I’m full of surprises,” he replied.

Dr. A. and Bria had just moved in together to reconcile their opposite schedules. Dr. A worked nights in the emergency room at Bellevue, and Bria had a nine-to-five at a literary agency. Sometimes he met her on her lunch break so they could see each other in the daytime, but otherwise, at home, Bria’s arrival at seven each evening was Dr. A’s cue to leave. For a while the arrangement was ideal.

“Hello,” Bria said one night, returning home. In their living room, Dr. A was reading with his feet propped up. He was in a Whitman phase, and referred to Leaves of Grass as his medicine. He repositioned his yamika on the crown of his head. He was also in a phase of enthusiastic re-devotion to his faith. His hair was growing longish, beard sprouting coils of gray. He resembled a folksinger more than a radiologist. He rose and walked into the kitchen without saying a word, looked Bria straight in the eye, and slowly gave her a close-mouthed kiss. His intensity still gave her the jitters.

“One of our authors was in today,” said Bria, “he wrote a book about orcas in captivity. His book is about this one whale who was taken from the sea when he was two. So still a baby. Do you know they’re the most intelligent creature in the ocean? Then, after three years of putting on shows, it went insane and murdered all the trainers.”

“Sounds like the whale knew what was best for everyone.”

“What if it’s the same with humans?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like what if we’ve all been taken from a place that we can barely remember. One where we used all of our senses. Maybe we even had additional senses. And now we can only faintly imagine it because we’ve been raised in captivity, force-fed cake and plopped in front of screens. We’re like ‘not so bad,’ ‘I want to go to Target.’ But we have this instinct there’s something else that we were built for, that was obscured from us by a master race that gets a kick out of watching our little tricks. Shaking hands and eating pudding and waiting in line. And the ones who lose it are the ones fed up with the act. Like the whale.”

Dr. A stared at her. “I like it when you talk conspiracy,” he reached out and cupped her cheek in his hand, then turned and stepped into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

Bria heard the water turn on, and a few moments later Dr. A poked his face out of the bathroom door, mouth foamy. “You want to get stoned before I go?”

“You have to focus. People’s health is in your hands.”

“What about my health?”

Bria was not disillusioned by Dr. A’s professional status. He treated his job like a temporary tattoo. A decade of rigorous schooling and a six-figure salary was something he planned to scrub off one day with a cold washcloth. His master plan was to declare himself mentally unfit to the hospital board, be relieved of the obligations of normal society, and take over his grandmother’s apartment in Tel Aviv, where he would paint naked all day in front of an open window and age like Mick Jagger. He added an unpredictability and challenge to her life that she was coming to need in increasingly strong doses, making her worry about what might happen when he ceased to inject her with his company, withheld that sweet jolt of mania that she was getting hooked on. He had the potential to reverse her past several years of reasonable decision making, hard work, and self-control. It was her belief, however, fed by Gotham mythology of struggle and cold-water flats and art, that life in the city was meant to be messy. She wanted to be in the trenches with someone.

Two months later, Bria came home and Dr. A wasn’t on the sofa. The apartment was dark and it appeared he’d left a window open because it was freezing cold. Bria found the open window and closed it and checked her phone for messages. He hadn’t said anything about needing to leave early for work that night. Then she saw that he had taped a medium-length handwritten letter to that day’s newspaper and left it in the center of the kitchen table. She untaped the letter. He’d bought a ticket to Israel to put his medical training to use, and maybe find a wife. He’d also stuck a check to the paper, for his share of the rent left on the lease, plus another two thousand dollars. In the memo line he’d written “damages.”

Bria’s mind flashed to an anecdote she’d once read about a woman who fell in love with an explorer who was everything she’d hoped to find in a partner: brave, handsome, passionate about his dream to go to Antarctica to study penguins, which was all he could talk about from the first night they met. She felt immensely lucky to be with someone so dedicated. They spent all their time together, got serious, and she started telling her friends that he was the one. Then one day he split to go to the Antarctica to live with the penguins, just like he’d been talking about the whole time. The woman was heartbroken. The moral of the story was about being a good listener, and not being surprised when people turn out to be who they’ve been all along.

The next day, Bria went to work. She unlocked the door to the office at quarter to nine, sunlight streaming in through windows with a view of the Chrysler building. She hung her coat, turned on her computer, and brewed a pot of coffee. Masha burst through the door at 9:30, fresh from the gym, showered and perfumed, in an elegant brown tweed suit. “Did Judy call yet? And have you sent the package to the Duchess? I hope not. If you haven’t, don’t, there’s something I need to add to it. I had the loveliest dinner with my nephew last night, he’s engaged to this delightful girl. She said she’d knit me a scarf. Is this a new thing, Bria? Women reclaiming traditional modes of craftsmanship. Do you knit? We ate at The Four Seasons. They’ve updated their wine list and it knocked my socks off. Made me wish I was still imbibing.” Masha was comforting, she created her own atmosphere.

“I still have the package.” Bria walked into Masha’s office with a pad and pen to take down the morning’s to do list. Masha peered up at her from her desk and asked, “What is wrong with you?”

Masha made Bria sit down and coaxed the story out of her. She offered up her strengths in response: experience, solutions, connections. She had had her heart broken two decades ago by Alec Baldwin, and what Bria needed was to either plunge herself into work or get the hell outta dodge, and if she wished to do both at once, Masha could arrange for it. In twenty minutes she’d phoned her friend Deborah, a set designer with a flat in Barcelona. Bria would spend ten days there. Masha expected her to check email a few times a day, manage correspondence remotely, but as far as the day-to-day stuff Masha said she would manage.

Bria booked exorbitant last-minute airfare on Masha’s AmEx, finished the day, and left. The breeze on 21st Street broke across her forehead like a lobotomy.

***

In Barcelona, Bria drank stovetop espresso from a white ceramic cup every morning, snacked on strawberries on the terra cotta roof at noon, poured herself a glass of cava at four, lit a hash cigarette at sunset. Deborah’s shelves were stacked with English-language paperbacks that Bria devoured. It was hot everyday, and the buzz of Vespas vibrated the entire front half of Deborah’s massive, tiled flat. Bria slept on top of her sheets. She checked her email. Loads of maternal chatter from Masha, and radio silence from Dr. A, which made her so sad that when the time came for Bria to board her flight back to New York, she didn’t. She packed her bag, thanked Deborah, made a big show of climbing into a cab and vowed to return someday to this enchanting city. As soon as the car peeled away from the curb she told the driver not to take her to the airport, but down to Las Ramblas.

She spent the day lost in a carnival of street performers and tourists, hookers and frat boys and fruit stands and bronzed Catalans. She ordered jamon at an outdoor café, then walked down to the beach and bought a red can of Estrella from a gypsy. Then she bought another, and another, until she was quite drunk. She propped herself on her suitcase and watched the sun sink into the Mediterranean. She spent the night in a hostel and made a call the following day to a student housing agency that arranged a temporary accommodation for her—a small room in a shared flat, 400 euro upfront. She took the train to Cort, past La Sagrada Familia, and found her way to Lola’s house.

Lola was Chilean and had a single, thin braid trailing down the back of her neck, more of a rattail than a hairstyle. Sometimes she sang opera, but she and Bria couldn’t really communicate with each other, and as far as Bria could tell, Catalans found it either rude or boring to speak of occupations, so she never tried to ask. Lola kept slim volumes of political theory and poetry on a bookshelf in the foyer.

The room Bria rented was pretty wretched, as far as rooms go. It was tiny, and the one overhead light was so dim that when she went outside into daylight after being in her room, her eyes hurt as they adjusted to the sun. It had plenty of shelves, though, and storage drawers under the lofted single mattress, a small writing table, and a mirror. It also had access to a small private terrace at the bottom of an airshaft. She had spent several enjoyable siestas sitting out there, balancing on a metal stool and reading. She thought it to be the best redeeming feature of the space, until one day two weeks into her stay.

Bria was walking down the corridor absent-mindedly and had almost reached the exit and the bright white sunshine when a curly-haired woman passed by her and grabbed her arm, “You’re the one my husband fancies.”

“Excuse me?”

“Our terrace looks out onto your terrace.”

“It does?”

“Yeah. Through your glass doors we can see you. Well, my husband can see you—because he gets up real close to the holes in the divider wall. You leave your blinds open. When you shimmy around in that slip you really get him going.” The woman’s abdomen spread low and round. She held a lit cigarette in one hand and a leash in the other, tethered to her dog.

“I didn’t think anyone could see my terrace.”

“Guess again. We can. We can see you when you dance all around. Pretty good dancing.”

“Dancing?”

“Don’t feel too bad, though,” the woman said. Her dog couldn’t see through the fur that hung down into his eyes. He paced around her legs, urging her to hurry. “My husband is a bit of a creep. I try to get him away from the hole in the wall, but he’s always there watching. He watched the other girls, too, but Lola hasn’t had a pretty one for a while now. I’d say you’re my husband’s second favorite.”

“Oh.”

“The one he liked best was Cuban. Her name was Maggie—short for Magdelena. She was okay. Now that I’ve met you up close, I think you’re prettier. “

“I’ll be more careful about pulling the blinds,” Bria said. “If that’s what you’re getting at.”

The woman took a puff on the cigarette. When she inhaled she sucked her cheeks way in, “Come on, Pau. I don’t have all day.” She dragged the dog out the door, leaving a trail of smoke.

Bria stood in the hall for a minute, pretending to count the change in her coin purse and replaying the conversation over in her head. There was something nagging her about what the woman had said, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

She thought for the first time about the girls who had come before her in Lola’s room, who had spent a few weeks or months in the dimness. The room was cell-like, sure, but it was starting to grow on Bria, in a way that was also cell-like. The other kind of cell, though, the kind that grows and mutates into something that must be cut away.

Then it dawned on Bria what was so strange about the conversation. We see you when you dance around, the woman had said. Pretty good dancing. Bria reeled through her memory, trying to recall the collected moments she spent in the tiny room. She shut her eyes and squeezed each day through her brain. She could be fairly certain the husband may have seen her reading, combing her hair, folding clothes, getting dressed and undressed, writing at the small desk, shuffling through papers. If he’d looked close enough he might have seen her crying. But dancing? No. She didn’t remember dancing even once.

 ***

Not being able to communicate was what Bria found the hardest. When she paged through guidebooks she learned how to reproduce formalities, but she longed to vocalize original thoughts.  

In her room at Lola’s, there was no difference between midnight and noon, dusk or dawn. Each hour was equally dim.

One weekend, Lola’s brother came to visit her from Mallorca and, at once, the apartment was filled with words. They chatted for four straight days. Bria lounged in her room reading for most of the weekend, listening to this visit between relatives who were more than brother and sister. It seemed like they were two people who were genuinely interested in one another. As the visit progressed, they relaxed even more into easy conversation. In the morning, they would sit in the kitchen and light cigarettes and close the door to contain the smoke. They’d chat for hours over a dish of plums and a box of Camels. In the evening, they would invite a few friends over and talk deep into the night, sharing more cigarettes and red wine, mixing whiskey with Coke and grazing over a dish of almonds and a bar of milk chocolate on the coffee table. Around midnight Lola would put a frozen pizza into the oven, and this provided sustenance for more conversation. It was nearly dawn before they ran out of words. Bria listened to their voices and wondered what it was they were talking about. Beauty and music and art and politics and family and the past and the future, she guessed. She wanted to understand. Language, she thought, is the most valuable currency on earth.

***

A week later Bria ran into the woman again on her way downstairs to the market to pick up a few things. The woman’s greeting was friendly enough, but her expression was strange. She looked slightly frightened. Before Bria could depart, the woman reached out a hand to grasp her wrist and said in a hushed voice, “There’s something you should know about Lola’s girls.”

“What’s that?”

“Maggie in particular.”

“Your husband’s favorite?”

“Right.”

“What is it?”

“Hmm. Can’t really speak of it here. Takes some explaining. Do you have a moment this afternoon to come to mine for a coffee?”

“Okay.” Bria said, intrigued. “I’m not doing anything pressing, actually, just picking up some food downstairs. Alright if I come by in twenty minutes?”

“Yep. Just knock when you’re outside. 5A. I’m Camille.”

Bria went to the market and returned. She stashed most of the groceries away in Lola’s kitchen, but brought a jar of olives over to Camille’s as a gift.

Camille answered the door and ushered Bria inside and over to her low white sofa. She pulled the TV cart up close to their seats so they could put their coffees down. She arranged other treats on the cart: a glass dish filled with cocktail peanuts and salty garbanzo beans, a one-liter bottle of room temperature Coca-cola, a box of cigarettes, and a clean ashtray. Bria didn’t usually smoke but accepted one anyway.

“So,” she said finally. “What did you want to tell me about Magdalena.”

“Maggie,” Camille corrected, taking a pensive drag. “Well, I don’t really know a whole lot about who she was before she came here. Clay, my husband, could tell you more. I know she was Cuban. She was about twenty. Long dark hair, but she messed it up with those highlights. Gorgeous ass.”

Bria raised her eyebrows and picked up a handful of cocktail mix. “And where is she now?” she asked.

“Arr. Eye. Pee.” Camille drawled.

“R.I.P.” Bria repeated. “Like, dead?”

“Like real dead.”

“What did she die of?”

“Dark alleys and inner demons, the way I heard it.”

“Who told you?”

“Lola did. We don’t chat much, but Lola was real shook up about it. She takes a pretty hands-off approach with her boarders. I’ll bet she doesn’t even have your mobile number, huh?”

“Nope.”

“So, when the police called she didn’t really know what to do. They came and cleared out Magdelena’s belongings. I don’t think the family ever came. I don’t know if there was a family to speak of.” The two were silent for a bit and Camille took the television off mute, which had been flickering silent images. Keanu Reeves mouthed a dubbed baritone Spanish, teaching an earnest kid how to play baseball and never quit, which made him realize that he’d always wanted a son. It was one of those movies. They watched it to the end, filling their glasses with warm Coca-cola until the bottle was empty and their teeth were coated with sugar. Bria’s eyes burned from the smoke in the room, and Pau the dog was antsy for some butt-sniffing outside. It looked like it was going to rain.

“Thank you for the coffee, Camille. I really should be going, now.”

“Okay, sure. But. Well, hang on just a minute. Before you go, there really is one more thing I should tell you.” Camille slid another cigarette from the box with nervous, twitchy fingers. “That room. The one you’re in right now?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“Well, one day my husband was on his usual spot out on the terrace—doing his ‘reading’ as he calls it, but bullshit I knew what he was up to. Well, this one day, he kind of ran into the kitchen all spooked. ‘What is it?’ I kept asking him. ‘What’s wrong?’ And he just sat there looking kind of dazed. Finally, he came out with it. He said that she was on the bed, on all fours, facing the wall. Real close to the wall, in her bedroom. The wall over the bed.  She was staring at it and staring at it, like there was something there, but there was nothing there. Then, she started licking it. The wall. Up and down and all over like a hungry cat. A sick, hungry, thirsty cat.”

Bria pictured the wall over her bed. She pictured the dead Cuban’s girl’s wet tongue passing over the dirty, cream-colored stucco.

“What I’m trying to tell you, is that she’s still in that room. She’s left something behind. They all have. And don’t think you won’t either.”

***

Bria kept waiting for a word for Dr. A. An email, a phone call, even a strong premonition that he was thinking of her. Nothing ever came. Bria felt that she had slipped out of her old life gently, like a robe.

In Barcelona, wine was as cheap as water. Cheaper, sometimes. As the days went by, long mornings spent reading in bed with a coffee turned into long, languid afternoons spent reading in the sun on a bench. Bria moved in a bubble of isolation. She could communicate with a smile, a nod, eyes, hands, and hair, but she didn’t have the words. She didn’t understand.

Slowly, Bria became familiar with faces around the neighborhood at the cafés and bars. She drank café cortadas in the sunlight and bought one euro bottles of La Mancha red wine. Cheers cheers, salud. It began to take the place of reading as the way she filled her time. Lazy glasses and crooked strolls. Sentences that might have stuck slid away. One night, Bria went to an absinthe den to meet new acquaintances who had the names of city streets. They stayed all night, laughing at jokes Bria didn’t quite get. At five in the morning Bria walked outside into the deserted placa by herself to get some fresh air. It was raining a light misty rain, but she didn’t mind. It felt great, cooled her heated cheeks.  She sat on a bench and peered at her reflection in a puddle. 

Sheer wet black chiffon was plastered to her skin like bandages. Bria shut her eyes for just a moment, took a few deep breaths. When she opened them, she was surrounded by pigeons.

“You look nice.”

Bria would know that voice anywhere. She rose to her feet, wobbly with wine. She waited for it to come again.

“I always thought you were prettiest when your hair was wet.” She spun around wildly, heart racing, scanning the alleys in either direction, but there was not a human in sight. Only pigeons. Eyes lined in orange with emeralds pinned to their throats. The laces of red slippers tied up their skinny legs.

“How are you, anyway? I’ve missed you.”

“Ari?”

“Who else.”

Bria stared down at the flock in front of her. They bobbed and cooed just like normal pigeons, but his voice floated above them, not coming out of one bird in particular, but forming a cloud over them, humming with the collective power of their bird brains.

“I miss you.”

“Are you writing?”

“I’ve written a couple poems, but nothing much else. The poems are pretty good, I’d love for you to read them!”

“Sure, I’d love to. Do you have them with you?”

“No. Left them in my other suit. HA. Do you like my dress?”

“You look like a goth chick, hot. Who are trying to pick up in there?”

“No one… really. I haven’t been able to think of other men.”

“Well, how could you? The way I just up and left. What a rotten thing to do… that’s going to take a while to get over.”

“Is it worth it to even ask?”

“Ask what?”

“No, nevermind. I don’t want to know… let’s just talk all night, okay? Just you and me.”

“That’s all I want, too.”

***

The next morning Bria woke in her warm bed at Lola’s, with no memory of how she’d arrived home. She felt her dreams slip away, memories of something she wanted desperately to hold onto. As she started to come to, she filled with panic. Where were her keys, her wallet? She was wearing the same blue pajamas as always. Her clothes from the night before—the black chiffon dress and fishnet tights—were draped over her desk chair. Her hair was still a bit wet. Her teeth felt clean and so did her skin, like she’d remembered to wash before getting into bed. Her earrings were on the nightstand in a porcelain saucer. Okay. Her heart started to slow. Everything was okay. She was at Lola’s house. She’d made it back, safe and sound. She rolled to her side and sat up in bed, touched her feet to the floor. She opened her blinds to the terrace, and that’s when she smelled it. Acrid and thick, like death. She noticed one gray feather on the floor, and another one next to it. She saw thick clumps on the tiles. She followed the feather trail out into the hall where they were mixed with stringy membranes and blood, and, presumably, all the thoughts that had once taken shelter in the brains and all the words and memories. All those things that brains hold onto. Preferences and opinions and secrets.

In the frying pan on the stove there was a mound of roasting flesh. Pigeons for breakfast. Eggs on the side. Toast and butter and orange marmalade. Bria approached the stove, dipped a spoon into the sizzling skillet and stirred. She smiled, and cooed.

Bria listened as Lola opened the door to her bedroom and came down the hall toward the kitchen. “Are you cooking?” Lola asked sleepily. “Smells good.” She came into the doorway and stopped dead in her tracks.

“Magdelena?” Lola stared. “What are you doing here?”

Lola only spoke Spanish. She had only ever spoken Spanish. And for the first time ever Bria understood. It was crystal clear.

“I’m making breakfast.”