The City That Never Sleeps

1

  “Don’t go outside,” Detective Travis Warren told the young, yummy woman about to set out on her morning jog.

  “There’s a body,” he further added. “In fact there are many bodies. Dead ones. Everywhere.”

  Sophie sat very still, observing her favorite actor in the entire world. His face – my god, that face! That blonde hair. That thick, manly mustache. That voice. Detective Travis Warren was played by Jonis Trayhen, and he was Sophie’s first crush ever.

  All of the sudden her mother entered the living room with her stupid Avon booklets, blocking the TV.

  “MOM!” Sophie fussed. “Move, you’re blocking it! I can’t see.”

  Her mother just stared her down. “Calm down, Sophie.”

  “I will throw the remote at you, I swear!” Sophie was feeling quite irritable that day. She just wanted to be alone, but her mother never went anywhere. Anywhere. She was always in the house.

  “Sophie,” her mother chuckled, astounded. “You will go to your room with no more TV or supper if you keep that attitude up.”

  “I JUST WANT TO SEE THE TV!!!” Sophie hollered at the ceiling. There was a very simple solution to this – all her mother had to do was sit down, and she was just two steps away from the couch.

  “Okay, that’s it.” Her mother snatched the remote up from the coffee table and clicked a button that made the whole picture go black. She took his voice away, she took his face away, all at once.

  “Go to your room,” her mother pointed down the hall. Like I don’t know where my room is, Sophie thought.

  “Don’t you roll your eyes at me!” Her mother yelled. “I mean it, Sophie. Go. NOW.”

  “For the rest of the night?” Sophie picked her eyes up from the floor and looked at her mother, who she grew to detest more and more by the hour. It used to be by the day.

  “Yes, until the sun comes up. Yes.” Dorris sat down on the couch. When she was angry, her bottom lip puffed out.

  “What about later, when the fireflies come out?” Sophie asked, before walking off.

  “Stay in your room until the sun comes up or else.”

  2

  Sophie could smell the steamy vegetables and steak coming down the hall from the kitchen. She was hungry, in fact she’d never felt so hungry in her life. Knowing that she would be deprived of a nice hot meal made it even worse.

  She could hear her parents have polite conversation at the table, but in restricted tones. They didn’t love each other anymore, but they’d devoted so much of their life to one another that Sophie figured they’d just stay together. Who else out there would want their wilting bodies and addled minds?

  The talking stopped and a few minutes later Sophie heard footsteps approach her door.

  Detective Travis Warren, that you? Have you come to find out why my life sucks so much? Sophie thought, making herself laugh for a very quick second before she moped over to the door. She looked up at her mother’s long face.

  “I changed my mind, you can eat. I can’t be that cruel. But no TV.”

  “Firefly catching?” Sophie said, hopeful.

  “Sophie…” Dorris sighed as she descended down the hall. “I guess so.”

  Sophie ran back into her room for her bug jar she kept on her bedside table. It smelled like them. It smelled like grass and the night summer air. She skipped down the hallway and kept the jar right next to her plate of spaghetti. There was barely enough room for the jar with all the clutter on the kitchen table. Her mother could never decide what she wanted to do for work. This week it was Avon, so her little Avon books and samples were all over the table. The tiny lipsticks melted in afternoon strokes of sunlight. Last week she tried sewing, and her kits were everywhere with unfinished patterns of little kids flying kites. Then there were the unpaid bills between the cookie jar and breadbox. Dad couldn’t handle taking care of everything on his own anymore. He couldn’t pay for everything. And nothing Dorris tried to do work-wise ever panned out. Then there was the disgusting rag stained with ketchup in the middle of all the mess. Dorris didn’t clean either. What did she do? Constantly nag Sophie to stop watching TV and take up a new hobby. Sophie was already on the soccer team and when she wasn’t busy with that she was taking swimming lessons at the Y. That and her schoolwork had kept her busy throughout the school year. Now that summer was here she was hoping to catch a break.

  “I spoke to Leslie’s mom today, Vanessa,” Dorris began. Here it came…

  “She’s going to take lessons at that Dance Center in The Hamptons this summer.”

  “Great,” Sophie said, blithely disinterested. Dorris kept her eyes on Sophie.

  “Have you thought of what you want to do for the next three months?” Dorris pried as she broke a piece of garlic bread in half.

  “Mom its Sunday. School just ended Friday. Can’t I have a second to breathe? After spending a whole school year working hard? I can’t just take a break?”

  “You didn’t do that well in school,” she shot down. “B’s mostly, and you even got a few C’s. I don’t wanna hear it. You’re not spending the whole summer watching TV and collecting bugs, that’s for sure. You’ll get lazy. You’ll get fat – like that book you’ve been reading.”

  “I haven’t been reading it,” Sophie said, matter-of-fact. The book Dorris was referring to was called Everyone I Know Got Fat. It was a how-to about preventing weight gain.

  Sophie continued to butter her garlic bread, trying not to cry. Nothing will ever be good enough for her mother because her mother was disappointed in herself, in the way her own life had turned out. Sophie could never fix that.

  “What have you been doing all day – besides watching that silly show.”

  “I like that show,” Sophie said, in defense though a bit meek. “TV is pointless. The Devil invented television. TV makes people fat – it’s the number one cause of weight gain. If you took the time to read that book, you’d know that.” Dorris’s voice was uppity. Sophie glanced over at her indolent father.

  “Dad did you lock the shed in the carport?” she asked, her words sliding out of her mouth in one big rush. He kept reading the paper.

  “Dad?” Sophie tried to pull his eyes up from the section he was reading.

  “What?” he fussed.

  “The carport? The shed, did you lock it?”

  “No, no.”

  “Okay, can you leave it unlocked?” she asked. His eyes were already back in the paper.

  “Yeah, yeah, yes,” he grouched.

  “Listen,” Dorris tried to get Sophie’s attention back. “I’m going to call Vanessa in the morning. She has that big house and all, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to spend the summer in The Hamptons. Who wouldn’t want to do that?”

  “Me, mom. I would like to just rest for a month. Can’t I just rest for a month?”

  “And get fat? That what you want, Sophs?”

  Sophie dropped her fork and sat there, sullen, her hand against her cheek.

  “May I please be dismissed?” she asked.

  “I would really like for you to consider going to The Hamptons. What if it turns out that you love dancing?” Dorris said.

  “I don’t like to dance,” Sophie reminded. “I’m not a dancer. I was going to, at some point, focus on swimming.”

  “You already know how to swim!” Dorris said, overly excited. “I’ve seen you, you’re great. Now its time to do something else. You might like it. You didn’t like soccer this much until you tried it.”

  “That’s not true,” Sophie was careful not to yell but that was all she wanted to do.

  “If I looked like I wasn’t having fun its just because I was fully focused on perfecting my craft.” But you wouldn’t know anything about that, she heatedly thought.

  “Sophie, that is great, that’s what I love to hear you say. You would only be in The Hamptons for a month, and then you can come back and swim. Say you’ll think about it.”
/>
  Sophie knew her mother wasn’t going to let this go. She wasn’t going to be satisfied until Sophie’s bags were packed and shipped off along with her to The Hamptons. She knew Dorris was embarrassed by her continuous state of bereavement and at least with Sophie in The Hamptons and her father off living his secret life, Dorris could be alone in her own despair.

  “I will go to The Hamptons, may I be excused now?” Sophie kept her tone mellow. All she wanted was to be out in the summer night, surrounded by those pretty twinkling insects.

  “Okay, great! I will call Vanessa and make the arrangements tomorrow.”

  Sophie nodded as she pushed her chair in. She glanced at her father, who hadn’t looked up from his paper during the rest of the debacle.

  3

  For a minute he saw what they used to do in the kitchen, before it became a space where they tried to avoid one another while they quickly prepared something to eat. Phillipe used to fuck his wife there. He used to take her. She used to get so overwhelmed by him, by him touching her, by his voice. He would approach her from behind as she did the dishes, wrap his arms around her soft body, grope her, smell her skin, and she’d drop whatever thing was in her hand and turn around, pressing her body against his like she’d die if she didn’t do it quickly enough. Then she’d spread her legs around him when he picked her up and placed her on the table and her head would fall back and he’d say sweet stuff like, “Are you having a good day beautiful?” And she’d sigh, “I am now,” and he’d touch her and find her warm and wet and eager and he’d