The Opposite of Everyone: A Novel

  I never saw Joya again. I didn’t talk about her, and I tried not to think her name. Not until I got all that good, free university therapy while I was in school. My Emory counselor was the one who said the way we ended things was not uncommon for kids like us. She said we’d lost enough in our short lives to want to cauterize our wounds before they happened. We burned our connection closed before we felt the holes.

  Years ago, I had a client who reminded me of Joya. One of my earlier pro bono girls, a payback to karma on top of Kai’s monthly checks. This one was barely eighteen, built small with milk-chocolate skin and eyes so dark brown they looked pure black from any distance. She’d been Stockholmed into calling her pimp her boyfriend, and she was about to eat a ten-year sentence, covering his ass.

  By the time I was done, the pimp did his own time, while my client walked with court-mandated counseling and five years’ probation. She hugged me when it was over, trembling, her body as delicate and small-boned as a sparrow’s. That night, I drank a little too much bourbon, and I called Birdwine. I told him I had a job that billed to me, not the firm, which usually meant it was part of a pro bono case. I gave him Joya’s name.

  I should have known better. Hell, I knew the recidivism rates, knew how seldom stories like Joya’s got a happy ending. Statistics said once her mama got back in her old environment, she would find old friends, slip back into old habits, and sink Joya with her. The daughters of crack addicts and prostitutes almost never find their way to dental hygienist school, much less Yale. But Joya was so tough. I hoped. Hoped stupidly and very hard. Hard enough to ask the question.

  Birdwine found her fast because she had a sheet. Drugs and prostitution. She’d died in south Atlanta at nineteen, caught in gang crossfire.

  He said, “I don’t have a lot of details. A black working girl, it’s not like the paper’s going to spend the inches.” His gruff, blunt voice was suspiciously gentle. “Want me to keep digging?”

  There was the briefest silence on the line between us. On my side, it was filled with the most foolish longing; I wanted him to track down the waiter who had served Joya’s celebration dinner at Demy’s Blues-N-Burgers all those years ago. I wanted to know if she and her mama had a good time. I wanted proof that our breakup hadn’t soured her pleasure in seeing her mama’s car pull up or spoiled the taste of those cheese and chive potatoes.

  But almost as fast as I could feel it, it was laid to rest. I knew better. I understood firsthand how much it took to mar the joy of someone—the best and dearest someone in the world—coming to get you, just as promised. Whatever happened later, that dinner would have been so good.

  I said, “No. Send me a bill.”

  “This one’s on me,” he said, and then added, right before he hung up, “Sorry about your friend.”

  Either his investigation had been thorough enough to connect us, or he’d simply read me and decided it was personal. Either way, pretty savvy. That was when I decided he was worth working round his binges. I’d since used him for everything that mattered, and I’d never regretted it. Not until now. Not until he emailed me that he’d lost Hana. She was free-falling, lost in the same world that had eaten Joya. I wanted to interrogate Birdwine, dig through his file, see if anything would resonate. But Birdwine was unavailable.

  I knew where he was. When Birdwine went missing, it was never a mystery. He always went to the same place: Drunk. Drunk wasn’t on Google maps, and a trip to Drunk took as long as it took.

  I was impatient, but not angry. Birdwine was what he was, and anger wouldn’t change it or get me what I wanted any faster. As soon as he surfaced, I would jolly him along and get the information. If that failed, I’d peel it right out of his hide.

  Three times a day, before work, at lunch, and after a working dinner at my desk, I went and sat at Birdwine’s place. I didn’t wait in my car, either. The first morning, I’d wormed through the dog door and gotten Birdwine’s spare key out of his office desk. Looper would have eaten the face off any stranger who tried this move, but he was thrilled to see me, thrilled to nap beside me on the sofa, thrilled to breathe in and discover afresh that the world was full of air. Dogs were such easy marks.

  The third day of my vigil coincided with one of Julian’s days off from Mellow Mushroom. He appeared at noon for more “internship.” I was slammed, and so I gave him to Verona. Around seven, I sent him to pick up Chinese so I could work through dinner, and I asked if he would stick around and go with me to Birdwine’s.

  I’d meant what I had promised in my car at Oakleigh’s. On the days he came to work with me, I took him for meals, asked him questions, got used to his spastic tendency to dart at me and hug me every time we said hello or good-bye. I hugged him back now, trying to let him be my brother in a realer way than updating the How do you know Julian field on Facebook. But I also thought that it would do the kid some good to visit Birdwine’s sketchy neighborhood.

  The neighbors were a mix: black and white and brown, young and old, some squatting briefly on their way up, others scrabbling for a hold on their way down. Across the street from Birdwine’s shabby craftsman, a taquería that smelled like horse meat and roach spray shared a building with a run-down barber shop. Two doors down, a thriving drug house did a busy trade. The whole street had an unstable danger vibe I knew well from most chapters of my childhood. Hana would know it, too.

  As we turned onto Birdwine’s block, I saw that the front door of his house was hanging open. Looper sat in the middle of the patchy front lawn, looking worried and long-suffering.

  “Shit! He’s home,” I said, and pulled over to park. I hadn’t expected to see him until tomorrow, at the earliest.

  Julian had barely registered the ratty streets as we wound through them, but he sat up very straight when he realized we were stopping.

  “This is where he lives?” Julian asked.

  “Yep,” I said.

  As we got out of the car, I could hear a terrible crashing sound coming from inside. Looper ran to me and thrust his giant, square head into my hand. I patted him, and he immediately turned and ran a few steps toward the door, pausing to peer back, his eyebrows set to anxious.

  “I know, buddy. Timmy’s in the well,” I told him.

  Julian paused, half out of the car. “Is that—the big guy? In there?” He sounded nervous. I’d forgotten—the first time he met Birdwine was in my office. I’d had a panic attack and Birdwine had stepped to him, violence limned in the angles of his body.

  “Yep.” We heard a whomping crash from inside. Birdwine wasn’t making a great second impression. “If a stranger was wrecking the house, Looper would be in there scrapping,” I said. Looper’s tail wagged when he heard his name, and he took another step toward the door, trying to get me to follow. I leaned against the car. “Not yet, buddy.”

  “How are you so calm?” Julian asked. He still had the passenger door open, and his head swiveled back and forth, peering up and down the street. I reminded myself that at dinner the other night, this kid had gotten in a lather because a Marietta neighbor let the dandelions take over his lawn. Baby steps.

  “He’s never killed anybody yet,” I said. I’d seen Birdwine on the back end of his cycle before. I had no girlish notions, either fearful or romantic, about what was in the house. “It may not be pretty in there, but it isn’t dangerous.”

  “I feel like we’re being watched,” Julian said, looking around uneasily, but he shut the door and came to stand beside me. “Do you feel that?”

  “No,” I said, but after he mentioned it, I realized that I did. I’d felt so watched at the office recently, I’d gotten used to the faint electric crawl across my skin. “It’s probably the one-stop pill shop two doors down. The dealer keeps a close eye on the street.” Not only for cops—sometimes ancient Mrs. Carpenter, who owned the house between them, went wandering down the sidewalk in her bra. Birdwine and the dealer both looked out for her.

  My explanation did nothing to set Julian at ease, but at least
it had gone quiet inside. I waited another minute, then decided to go in. I didn’t want to give Birdwine time to pass out.

  “You can wait here, if you like.” I boosted off the car and held my car keys out. “I’ll let you play the radio.”

  Julian paused and swallowed. The sun was almost down. “No. Let’s go.”

  Inside, the living room looked like a bear had gone crashing through it. A wooden chair was reduced to kindling, and the coffee table was overturned and shoved half into the fireplace. There were gaping holes and shatter-spots in the drywall. It looked like the whole room had pissed him off, and he’d taught it better with a baseball bat. The bat itself was cracked and lying in the middle of the floor.

  I could hear humming, loud and tuneless, coming from the kitchen. He seemed to be done breaking things, but he was still conscious. Good.

  Looper jumped up on the wide plaid sofa and flopped down in a sprinkle of wall plaster, the flakes catching like snow in his dense fur. He put his shoe-box head on his paws and gazed back and forth from me to Julian and back again, eyebrows twitching. Whatever was happening at the back of the house was clearly a human problem. He would wait right here.

  “Coward,” I told him, and he thumped his tail. So be it.

  As I walked back to the kitchen, Julian crowded up on my shoulder. He was nervous, but I got the sense he had my back. I’d underestimated him, again, thinking he’d chosen to come in with me because it was getting dark outside. The kid was a better dog than even Looper, loyal through and through.

  We found Birdwine by his hideous avocado-colored stove. One of its electric eyes glowed deep orange, and a fry pan full of smashed eggs sat on the dead, gray burner next to it. Birdwine had his back to us, rattling the pan and humming, stirring eggs that weren’t cooking at all. He peered owlishly over his shoulder as we came in. He was beat all to hell. His left eye was almost swollen shut, and blood had crusted at the corners of his lips.

  “Mmm, Pau,” he said, which I took to be a greeting. He was so drunk that turning his head set him swaying, like a man standing on a little boat at sea, riding the swells. “Ahmmakineg.” I’m making eggs.

  “I think you might be making deadly house fires,” I told him.

  He gave me a sloppy version of the big grin I’d always liked, the one that showed the gap in his front teeth. They were all still in his mouth, from this angle, anyway.

  “God, I’m scared to see the other guy,” Julian whispered, blinking rapidly.

  “There is no other guy,” I said.

  Birdwine came back from binges with cracked ribs, loose teeth, and new, exciting angles in his long nose. I used to worry that he’d accidentally kill someone. He was so big, and he knew how to fight. But he never once had broken fingers or even bruises on his knuckles; he closed his sprees by pissing people off, and then taking the beating.

  The kitchen was large, with room for a butcher block table and two chairs near the door. Birdwine’s old laptop, a huge slow thing I called his Craptoposaurus, was sitting on it, open. I went over to it and checked the screen.

  He was logged into Facebook, which was odd enough to make me do a double take. Not a social media guy, that Birdwine. Unless he had been trying to work, drunk, and this page was related to Hana? I wanted to slide into the closest chair and start digging, but Birdwine’s sleeve was dragging dangerously near the lit burner. I left the browser open and went to get him.

  “Julian, would you finish the eggs? You can make eggs, right?” I said, taking Birdwine by the shoulders, turning him away from the stove.

  “Everyone can make eggs,” Julian said, overly hearty.

  I steered Birdwine across the kitchen. He was unwieldy and out of balance, but he shuffled in the direction that I pointed him.

  “Look, Birdwine, it’s Julian, remember him?” To Julian I said, “And get him some water.”

  I dumped Birdwine in one empty chair, then went back to the other myself, the one close to the computer. Facebook was open to the page of a woman named Stella Martin. Her feed was full of pictures from what looked like a family beach vacation. I didn’t know any Martins, but the first name rang a faint bell.

  “There’s so much shell in here,” Julian said. “I think it’s all the shells.”

  I glanced at Birdwine, swaying in the chair.

  “Forget it. Turn the stove off and bring the water,” I told Julian, and then muttered to myself, “Stella, Stella, Stella. Who are you?”

  “Stellaaaaa!” Birdwine bellowed, sudden and loud, in a drunken Marlon Brando. Julian jumped and dropped the egg pan into the sink with a clatter. Birdwine cackled to himself.

  I gave him a stern look.

  “Do you see something about Hana?” Julian asked.

  “I don’t know yet. Birdwine? Is this about my case? Huh?” Dammit, I should have had him updating me every single day. But I hadn’t wanted that. I’d been very busy trying not to think about where Hana might be, what he might be finding. Trying to get square at my firm.

  He didn’t answer. Stella Martin’s profile picture showed an attractive dishwater blonde, somewhere around forty. Her top posts were all from the vacation. I scrolled through lots of pics of Stella with a dorky, freckled man that she’d tagged “The Hubs.” They had a slew of children: a teenage boy already towering over his mother and then a herd of little blond girls like stair steps running down from him. I put the oldest girl at ten or eleven—close to Hana’s age—but beyond that, I couldn’t see any connection.

  Then I remembered. Stella was the name of Birdwine’s ex-wife. The one who called him Zachary. She’d left him for another man, and now they lived in Florida.

  “Are you posting on your Stella’s wall, Birdwine?” I asked. I meant to say it quietly, and I was surprised to hear how sharp and loud my voice had gone.

  “Nah,” he said. “Ammustaliner.” Nah, I’m just stalking her.

  “What?” asked Julian. He had found a huge plastic cup with the Hulk on it and was filling it from the tap. “Who is Stella?”

  I sat back. This was ex-wife bullshit, which made it instantly Not Julian’s Business. Not mine either, truth be told, but I scanned the page anyway, and saw that Birdwine was logged in as someone named Jennifer James.

  My loud voice said, “Who’s Jennifer James?”

  “Me,” Birdwine said, and that, at least, was clear. He should hold all his answers to one syllable.

  “What are you looking at?” asked Julian, bringing the water over. He handed the Hulk cup to Birdwine, who guzzled at it in a noisy, greedy way that could not possibly have been any less attractive.

  “It’s not about Hana. I’ll search his other files in a sec, okay? But can you . . .” I paused, casting about for a reason, any reason, to get him from the room. I wanted to ask Birdwine why the hell he was stalking his ex-wife. More than that, I needed thirty seconds to get myself in hand. “ . . . Go change his sheets? We should put him to bed, and they’re probably disgusting.”

  Julian looked alarmed. “You want me to, like, open all his drawers and look for sheets?”

  “The spare set’s in the linen closet. It’s a narrow door halfway down the hall, beside the bathroom. Then his bedroom is at the very end.”

  “You know this place real well, huh?” he asked me, his head tilting to the side.

  “Julian, please?” I said. “He could pass out any second, and we’ll never get him moved.”

  Julian’s mouth scrunched up into a wad that made him look like all those disapproving rabbits on the Internet, but he went.

  I looked back at the screen. The former Stella Birdwine, now Martin, was one of those people who said yes to any friend request. She had almost six hundred, making it easy for Birdwine to invent a profile and friend her on the sly. Now he could watch her life like it was television.

  “This seems really healthy,” I said to him.

  Birdwine nodded, drunk-wry, and the movement almost tipped him from the chair. I felt inclined to let him fall. Let him sm
ash himself up a little more. What was another black eye between friends?

  Better question—why was I so pissed that he was mooning over Stella? I didn’t like the implications. Right before he left to go find Hana, I’d realized that he’d once been in love with me. I hadn’t asked myself the natural follow-up. Had I been in love back?

  I must have been, at least a little.

  I hadn’t noticed. But in retrospect, I could see that I’d gone about systematically killing it. I hadn’t had to think about it. I knew how. I’d had plenty of practice.

  I’d fallen for my best friend, William, back in high school. I’d slept with him once. Hell, I’d slept with him first, but I had never followed up. I’d started screwing college fellows, and I’d helped William land the girl of his dreams. The three of us had ended up best friends. In law school, Nick and I had a thing that could have turned out serious. He’d wanted that, at one point. I made it clear that I was nothing like monogamous, telling him stories of my conquests like we were bar buddies. I started acting as his wingman, both in mock trials and when he noticed a girl. The sex petered out, and we ended up business partners.

  Then Birdwine. I looked across the table at him, blood-crusted, smelling like roadkill. Ye gods help me, I hadn’t killed whatever was between us. Not all the way. Sure, I’d made him into a colleague and a friend, roles with much longer shelf lives than my lovers got, exactly as I had with William and Nick. But almost without noticing, I’d stopped looking for new men. I’d given up my friendly late-night calls to exes. And I sure as hell hadn’t worked to put other women on his radar.

  No matter. Son of a bitch had done a fine job tracking his ex-wife all on his own.