The Best American Short Stories 2017

  “You think so?” Lucy said in disbelief. “I mean, I think so, but no one else does. I got him from a shelter. He was scheduled to be killed the next day.”

  The dog raised his head and yawned. Up close, Kit could see that he had an underbite and one gluey eye, both of which truly were cute.

  “He destroyed my sofa,” Lucy said and Kit tried to imagine where a sofa could have fit in the apartment.

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah. He also hates when I talk on the phone. And when I masturbate.”

  “Oh God. What does he do?”

  “He just stares at me with this totally disgusted look and then pouts for the rest of the day. Actually, he also does that when I cry.”

  “He doesn’t want to see you become an animal.”

  “Exactly.”

  The next morning, Kit got a call from Sheila. Ned had made an appointment to see her that afternoon.

  “I can’t believe it,” Kit said.

  “The corn muffin guy?” Lucy asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess he liked you.”

  “It really didn’t seem that way.”

  It was Lucy’s day off. She padded around the apartment in a short silk robe. Pale blue, with a pattern of multicolored fish, the sash tied loose at her waist. It was a tiny garment, her thighs on full display, a flash of her bum here and there. She made coffee and fried eggs over toast, humming all the while, feeding scraps to Curtis with her fingers. “You can come over later if you want,” she said and tucked a blond strand behind her ear.

  “All right,” Kit said, smiling slyly. She squatted in the tub, washing her armpits and vagina. Lucy handed her a pink disposable razor. She opened a window and poked her head out. It was oddly warm. Shrunken gray mounds of snow hugged the sidewalk below. Dirty water dripped from the eaves.

  “I can’t believe how warm it is,” Lucy said.

  “And people still say global warming isn’t happening.”

  “Yeah, well, American stupidity is accelerating at the same rate.”

  Ned arrived in a mute daze. He wore a flat, melancholy expression and seemed barely to register Kit’s face as she waved from the black leather couch. Sheila led them to the same awful room and Kit sat tentatively on the edge of the bed. Ned removed his coat and sat beside her. He stared at the brown carpet and said nothing.

  “Are you okay?” Kit asked.

  Ned grunted slightly. With averted eyes, he rolled her onto her stomach and hiked up her dress. Kit sat up and pulled her dress off the rest of the way, then lay flat on her front like a routine sunbather. She heard his belt fall to the floor. Ned began jerking off and Kit thought of other things. Lucy dancing. The dog. Donuts on a plate. She studied the nicks and scuffs on the white wall, her head on its side. Ned’s breath quickened. He gasped and Kit sat up, turning to make sure he had come.

  Ned stood naked with his arms at his sides. He was crying.

  Kit stiffened. Goose bumps raised over her body. She considered dashing out of the room naked, but Ned lurched toward her. He sank his hot face onto her breasts and sobbed for what felt like minutes, then withdrew his face with sudden embarrassment.

  Ned moved to the edge of the bed with his back to her and Kit didn’t ask what was wrong. She didn’t want to know.

  “My kid is sick,” he said. “Six fucking years old.”

  Kit said nothing. She eyed the shininess between his shoulder blades.

  “I can’t see her. I don’t know what to say to her.” Ned looked over one shoulder desperately, his eyes flashing. “What do you think I should say to her?”

  “I don’t know.” Kit crawled over to him and forced her hand onto the small of his back, patting it. “What does she have?”

  “Leukemia,” he said, as though Kit were an imbecile.

  Her hand hardened on his back but she continued to pat him, almost harshly. “It’s okay,” she said uselessly. “It’ll be okay.”

  Ned turned sharply. “You don’t know that. No one does. No one knows what it’s like . . . to cease.”

  Kit removed her hand from his back. She stared into space. “I bet it’s like a drug experience,” she said finally. “Especially if you’re at a hospital and your insides are failing you. Like you probably have odd sensations. You feel really warm or you hallucinate. Then just drift off.”

  “Not everyone goes peacefully. People die screaming.” He had his arms folded.

  “You’re right.”

  “My uncle died screaming. He didn’t want to die.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Bone cancer.”

  They leaned back on the bed and each looked at the other’s feet. Hers were long and bare. He wore red and black argyle socks. Kit looked at them awhile and then through them, at nothing, her thoughts wild. She was angry. She hated Ned for dragging some dying little girl into the picture, for crying all over her breasts. She looked down at her knobby knees, the brown beauty mark near her crotch. I’m like Lucy’s dog, she thought. I don’t want to see him become an animal.

  Kit considered her own animal self. A wild thing looking out a window. A wild thing made to be a doll. For a moment she loved herself deeply, whoever she was. It was hard to know in the awful white room. She felt as if a circus tent were draped over her existence.

  Ned uncrossed his arms. “I’ve upset you,” he said and touched her leg gently. It was jarring and repulsive. He had never touched her this way.

  “No. I’m not afraid of death,” she declared. “I’m glad the human experience ends. I mean, what if it didn’t? What if you were just stuck here forever? That would be scarier than death.”

  He seemed to consider this peacefully, folding his arms again. “So what are you afraid of?” he asked and a slight smile tugged one side of his face. It was as if he had just remembered she was a prostitute.

  “Swallowing glass,” she said.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because they can’t do anything about it. Glass doesn’t show up in X-rays. It just takes one tiny piece and you die a slow, painful death.”

  “Jesus.”

  “A bartender told me that.”

  They were quiet awhile.

  “I like that you don’t wear makeup,” he said finally.

  “Yeah. I don’t think women should,” she said. “It looks so clownish.”

  “No. Some women should definitely wear makeup. But not anyone your age. Makeup on a youngster is redundant.”

  “You think I’m a youngster?”

  “Well you are.”

  Kit stared at him, glinting with hate.

  “Look at you,” he said. “Your skin.”

  “What?”

  “It’s so new,” he said and touched her cheek softly, letting his fingers rest there. “Youth is a class all its own,” he continued. “You all look alike.” He took his hand away. “But the fat breaks down—the glow. And you’re left with a kind of specificity. You fall into racial stereotypes.” He pointed to his own face. “And now you can’t tell what I was. I was this beautiful kid.”

  Kit averted her eyes. She folded her arms over her breasts.

  “How old are you, anyway?” he asked. “Twenty-something?”

  “I’m nineteen.”

  Ned smiled greedily. “What’s that like,” he said sarcastically, “being a teenager?”

  “Everyone wants what you have so they try to control you.”

  Ned looked surprised. He went silent and Kit turned to him, her eyes fierce. “Do you like watching two women together?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “There’s another girl here and if you paid us both double, you could watch us.”

  “Watch you what?”

  “You know.”

  “Are you a dyke?”

  “No. I just think you would like her.”

  Ned pondered a moment. He got up and reached into his coat pocket, withdrawing a business card. He placed the white card on Kit’s bare abdomen and broke int
o a smile.

  Kit saw several other men that day and felt nothing. By nightfall, she stood in the bathroom getting high, staring meditatively out the window. Ned remained in her mind, the weight of his face on her breasts. He is a hog for sorrow, she thought. And maybe I am too. Kit had never envisioned this life for herself. This is really happening, she thought. Any awful thing seemed possible. She was afraid of the concrete and cars down there below, of the opportunity she had always to hurl herself out the window. Kit didn’t really want to die, but the fact of having a choice was frightening.

  A flood of bothersome memories surged up as she put her pot away. She remembered her mother saying, “Your job should take a little piece of you that you don’t mind giving.” Kit believed that she had such a job. It’s just my body, she thought. And it didn’t seem like a lot to give away until she considered that it was all she had. This pussy is my only currency. It was a sickening thought.

  Outside, the moon was huge with white fog in front of it. A twitchy streetlight shone on the hoods of cars. Kit walked carefully over silvery areas of ice. She stopped to peruse the bright aisles of a deli and bought an expensive bar of chocolate wrapped in gold foil.

  On the train, Kit sat by the window and remembered that she had offered Lucy’s body to Ned and to herself. She imagined telling Lucy this and pictured her repulsed response. Kit broke off a cube of chocolate and sank into a whirling rabbit hole of panic. She almost missed her stop, loading chocolate into her mouth with a fixed look of dread. She walked to Lucy’s apartment haltingly, pausing whenever the image of Lucy’s disgusted face reemerged in her mind.

  Lucy arrived cheerily at the door, barefoot in a black-and-white-checked dress with triangle pockets. They sipped cans of beer on her bed and Kit rolled a joint, which proved tricky since her hands were clammy. She puffed on the loose roll and they talked. Because Kit was nervous, there was an odd theatricality to what should have been mundane chatter. Eventually a silence grew between them. Kit mopped her forehead with her sleeve. She crawled over to her bag and ate the last corner of chocolate, then blurted her proposal.

  “And he wouldn’t touch us?” Lucy asked.

  “No. But he will say really degrading things. I actually . . .” Kit stared into space. “I think I really hate this person.”

  “Why? Because he doesn’t respect you?” Lucy said mockingly.

  “No. Because he’s crazy.”

  “Look,” Lucy said. “Crazy people have one tactic, to convince you that you’re crazy. So you can’t let them.”

  Kit nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know why I even care. It’s the weirdest things that bother me about him. Like how he thinks dreams are meaningless.” She looked at Lucy. “He thinks his wife is stupid for analyzing them.”

  “He’s probably just a rich guy who went to too much therapy. Those types are really against any sort of prodding of the brain.” In a mock-deranged male voice, Lucy said, “It means nothing. I kill women every night. It means nothing!”

  Kit laughed. She considered telling Lucy about Ned’s dying daughter but quickly decided not to. She couldn’t bear to paint him as a tragic figure.

  “If he’s paying us double, I’ll totally do it,” Lucy said and Kit smiled, dropping her head, letting hair fall in front of her eyes.

  Later they lay in the dark, Curtis sprawled between them. “I feel weak and depressed from that chocolate,” Kit said. Lucy groaned softly, nearly asleep. She had hung Christmas lights on her fire escape and they cast a gem-like glow over the bed. Kit raised herself up on both elbows and studied Lucy. Her plump face in the colored light, wreathed with hair and shadows. Kit held her breath. It felt dangerous to watch such a beautiful person sleep. Lucy could wake at any moment, she thought, and there would be no mistaking the unflinching blaze in her eyes.

  Kit lowered her head back onto the pillow. She felt slightly gleeful that Lucy was willing to touch her, even if it was for money. It seemed, somehow, like a far-off compliment. She closed her eyes and Lucy’s body beamed in her thoughts. She thought of other girls too. All the girls who’d turned her on wildly and never knew. She rolled onto her side, sweating. Her crotch thumped like a big, wet heart.

  Curtis stirred, as if in response to Kit’s rising body temperature, the zinging nerves between her legs. He shimmied under the covers and stationed himself between Lucy’s feet.

  In the morning Kit felt like a criminal. Lucy tromped around in her skimpy robe, Curtis following close behind.

  “I made eggs,” Lucy said, gesturing toward the stove.

  “Great,” Kit said, reaching a slender monkeyish arm out for her clothes, which were scattered by the bed, much in the manner of Lucy’s socks.

  Lucy twisted a strand of gold hair around her pointer finger. “I used to think you didn’t eat. ’Cause you’re like, emaciated.”

  “I know. I look exactly like my mom. She’s built like a broom.”

  “My mom’s built like a refrigerator.”

  “Oh come on.”

  “She is.”

  They were both sitting on the black couch when Ned scheduled their appointment for the following week. Sheila responded with a look of mild revulsion as she penciled it in. Kit pretended to ignore the look but took it to heart. Later on, she called the number on Ned’s business card, which in the right-hand corner had a cartoon tooth. It was smiling and had a set of its own teeth. She held the card with her thumb over the tooth while arranging for him to fork over the extra amount in cash. “If you screw us over in any way,” she said, “I won’t see you again.”

  Kit saw a number of men that week and avoided Lucy. She paid off one of her credit cards. She learned that Sheila designed clothes when a small green dress appeared on the arm of the black couch. Sheila asked in an oddly sweet tone if Kit would model it for her. She was smiling but a look of scorn remained in her eyes, pulsing dimly. “I need to see it on someone small,” she said.

  The dress fit Kit remarkably well and she couldn’t help admiring it, but this only depressed her. It meant Sheila was something other than an asshole. She was an artist.

  Kit bought herself a handsome leather-bound journal that day. She put an aqua mason jar full of sharpened pencils on the windowsill by her bed. Then she tried to write but couldn’t. Ragged stray thoughts circled in her mind. Kit didn’t want to sit alone with her life, with the memories of a hundred male voices. She didn’t want to fuss over how to describe their faces. Instead she walked around her apartment, smoking pot from a glass pipe with the stereo on. She played Nico, who sounded like a prostitute to her, used and woeful. These days I seem to think a lot about the things that I forgot to do.

  In the morning Kit grabbed the leather journal and jotted down her dream, which felt remotely like a tribute to Ned’s wife. She wrote in a panic, the dream whirling and vanishing. It felt deeply important as she raced on, snatching bits of the fleeing dream. Then she set her pen down and read the frayed, mystical prose with satisfaction. It seemed to be proof of something. That she had an inside. I exist, she wrote and instantly felt foolish, scribbling over the words.

  Next she stood at the stove brewing espresso in a small steel pot, then went straight back to bed and sipped from her mug, a brown-tone afghan up over her shoulders. She watched hours of reality TV, which felt sleazy. This is the pornography of our lives, she thought.

  Kit wondered if Ned’s daughter was dead yet. She hated to think of him sobbing alongside a hospital bed with a little girl on it. What is the difference between me and her? she thought. Between a daughter and a whore? Possession, thought Kit. His daughter belongs to him.

  But they were girls in the same sea, she felt. Both their values had been established in relation to Ned’s sperm. It was gold when his daughter was conceived. It had taken a long, holy swim to the womb. But with Kit, his sperm had just been trash, just some muck on her ass. It was a weirdly gratifying epiphany. I am the receptacle, she thought. His daughter is a deity.

  Time
passed crudely. Kit had several dreams of leaping out of windows and becoming a ghost. She didn’t believe in the afterlife, but in her dreams it seemed so obvious. Even when she woke, it was true for a moment. Kit was deeply curious about death. We only know how to go from one place to another, she thought. How does it feel to go from one place to nowhere? Her thinking stopped at the point. She could only wonder. Death is the one thing you can’t write about, she thought.

  On the day of their appointment with Ned, Kit woke in a sweat. She forgot her dream instantly, but felt certain it had been a nightmare. I was being chased, she thought. Kit hauled herself into the shower and then got high in the kitchen, waiting for her coffee to brew. She set her glass pipe down and called Lucy.

  “What the fuck?” Lucy answered.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi? You’ve been ignoring me for days.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been really busy.”

  “Whatever.”

  They met on the street. Lucy in her tweed coat and a pair of oversized amber frames with rose-hued lenses, her bright hair blowing in the wind. Kit leaned up against a brick wall, squinting. She wore dark slacks and waxy brown combat boots. Lucy removed her sunglasses and they exchanged subtle looks of terror.

  “Your eyes,” Kit said.

  “What?”

  “They’re so green.”

  “Oh I know. I get startled in the mirror sometimes. ’Cause they change.”

  “I’ve noticed that.”

  “The Irish thought they were fairies,” Lucy said nervously. “If they had a baby with green eyes, they thought that the fairies had come and swapped it with one of their own.” She nodded as if encouraging herself. “So they basically murdered their green-eyed babies—threw them down a well, hoping the fairies would return their human baby.”

  “Scary.”

  “I know.”

  Upstairs they whipped past Sheila and headed straight for the bathroom. Kit changed into her same black uniform and Lucy removed her coat, revealing a silk camel-tone dress with opalescent buttons down the back. She beamed with anxiety. What was pink came soaring up to the surface of her face like a sunset.