{"id":3877,"date":"2017-11-17T17:11:21","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T17:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christinalaurenbooks.com\/Clo2\/?p=3877"},"modified":"2017-11-17T17:11:21","modified_gmt":"2017-11-17T17:11:21","slug":"roomies-chapter-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christinalaurenbooks.com\/Clo2\/2017\/11\/roomies-chapter-one\/","title":{"rendered":"ROOMIES – CHAPTER ONE"},"content":{"rendered":"

A little reading to get your weekend started. Roomies is almost two weeks away, and as promised… HERE’S CHAPTER ONE!<\/p>\n

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According to family legend, I was born on the floor of a taxi.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m the youngest of six, and apparently Mom went from \u201cI have a bit of a cramp, but let me finish making lunch\u201d to \u201cHello, Holland Lina Bakker\u201d in the span of about forty minutes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always the first thing I think about when I climb into a cab. I note how I have to shimmy with effort across the tacky seat, how there are millions of neglected fingerprints and unidentifiable smudges clouding the windows and Plexiglas barrier\u2014and how the floor of a cab is a really <\/em>terrible place for a baby to meet the world.<\/p>\n

I slam the taxi door behind me to block out the howling Brooklyn wind. \u201cFiftieth Street station, Manhattan.\u201d<\/p>\n

The driver\u2019s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror and I can imagine what he\u2019s thinking: Y<\/em>o<\/em>u<\/em> w<\/em>a<\/em>n<\/em>t<\/em> t<\/em>o<\/em> t<\/em>a<\/em>k<\/em>e<\/em> a<\/em> c<\/em>a<\/em>b<\/em> t<\/em>o<\/em> t<\/em>h<\/em>e\u00a0<\/em>subway in Manhattan? Lady, you could take the C train all the way there for three bucks.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cEighth Ave. and Forty-Ninth Street,\u201d I add, ignoring the clawing flush of awareness that I am absurd. Instead of taking the cab all the way home, I\u2019m having the driver take me from Park Slope to a subway stop in Hell\u2019s Kitchen, roughly two blocks from my building. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m particularly safety minded and don\u2019t want this cabbie to know where I live.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that it\u2019s Monday, approximately eleven thirty, and Jack will be there.<\/p>\n

At least, he should be. Since I first saw him busking at the Fiftieth Street station nearly six months ago, he\u2019s been there every Monday night, along with Wednesday and Thursday mornings before work, and Friday at lunchtime. Tuesday he\u2019s gone, and I\u2019ve never seen him there on the weekend.<\/p>\n

Mondays are my favorite, though, because there\u2019s an intensity in the way he crouches over his guitar, cradling it, seducing it. Music that seems to have been trapped inside all weekend long is freed, broken only by the occasional metallic tumble of pocket change dropped into the open guitar case at his feet, or the roar of an approaching train.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what he does in the hours he\u2019s not there. I\u2019m also fairly certain his name isn\u2019t Jack, but I needed to call him something other than \u201cthe busker,\u201d and giving him a name made my obsession seem less pathetic.<\/p>\n

Sort of.<\/p>\n

The cabbie is quiet; he isn\u2019t even listening to talk radio or any of the other cacophonous car-filler every New Yorker gets used to. I blink away from my phone and the Instagram feed full of books and makeup tutorials, to the mess of sleet and slush on the roads. My cocktail buzz doesn\u2019t seem to be evaporating as quickly as I\u2019d hoped, and by the time we pull up to the curb and I pay the fare, I still have its giddy effervescence simmering in my blood.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never come to see Jack while drunk before, and it\u2019s either a terrible or a fantastic idea. I guess we\u2019re about to find out which.<\/p>\n

Hitting the bottom of the stairs, I catch him tuning his guitar and stop a few feet away, studying him. With his head bowed, and in the beam of the streetlight shooting down the stairs, his light brown hair seems almost silver.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s suitably scruffy for our generation, but he looks clean, so I like to think he has a nice apartment and a regular, well-paying job, and does this because he loves it. He has the type of hair I can\u2019t resist, neat and trimmed along the sides but wild and untamed on top. It looks soft, too, shiny under the lights and the kind of hair you want to curl a fist around. I don\u2019t know what color his eyes are because he never looks up at anyone while he plays, but I like to imagine they\u2019re brown or dark green, a color deep enough to get lost in.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never seen him arrive or leave, because I always walk past him, drop a dollar bill in his case, and keep moving. Then, covertly from the platform, I look over\u2014as do many of us\u2014to where he sits on his stool near the base of the stairs, his fingers flying up and down the neck of the instrument. His left hand pulls out the notes as if it\u2019s as simple as breathing.<\/p>\n

Breathing. As an aspiring writer, it\u2019s my least favorite clich\u00e9, but it\u2019s the only one that suits. I\u2019ve never seen someone\u2019s fingers move like that, as if he doesn\u2019t even have to think about it. In some ways, it seems like he gives the guitar an actual human voice.<\/p>\n

He looks up as I drop a bill into his case, squinting at me, and gives me a quiet \u201cThanks very much.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s never done that before\u2014looked up when someone dropped money in his case\u2014and I\u2019m caught completely off guard when our eyes meet.<\/p>\n

Green, his are green. And he doesn\u2019t immediately look away. The hold of his gaze is mesmerizing.<\/p>\n

So instead of saying, \u201cYeah,\u201d or \u201cSure\u201d\u2014or nothing at all, like any other New Yorker would\u2014I blurt, \u201cIloveyourmusicsomuch.\u201d A string of words breathlessly said as one.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m gifted with the humblest flicker of a smile, and my tipsy brain nearly shorts out. He does this thing where he chews on his bottom lip for a second before saying, \u201cDo you reckon so? Well, you\u2019re very kind. I love to play it.\u201d<\/p>\n

His accent is heavily Irish, and the sound of it makes my fingers tingle.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d<\/p>\n

Three mortifying seconds pass before he answers with a surprised grin. \u201cCalvin. And yours?\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a conversation. Holy shit, I\u2019m having a conversation with the stranger I\u2019ve had a crush on for months.<\/p>\n

\u201cHolland,\u201d I say. \u201cLike the province in the Netherlands. Everyone thinks it\u2019s synonymous with the Netherlands, but it\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oof.<\/p>\n

Tonight, I\u2019ve concluded two things about gin: it tastes like pinecones and is clearly the devil\u2019s sauce.<\/p>\n

Calvin smiles up at me, saying cheekily, \u201cHolland. A province and <\/em>a scholar,\u201d before he adds something quietly under his breath that I don\u2019t quite make out. I can\u2019t tell if the amused light in his eyes is because I\u2019m an entertaining idiot, or because there\u2019s a person directly behind me doing something awesome. Having not been on a date in what feels like a millennium,<\/p>\n

I also don\u2019t know where a conversation should go after this, so I bolt, practically sprinting the twenty feet to the platform. When I come to a halt, I dig in my purse with the practiced urgency of a woman who is used to pretending she has something critical she must obtain immediately.<\/p>\n

The word he whispered\u2014lovely<\/em>\u2014registers about thirty seconds too late.<\/p>\n

He meant my name, I\u2019m sure. I\u2019m not saying that in a false-modesty kind of way. My best friend, Lulu, and I agree that, objectively, we\u2019re middle-of-the-pack women in Manhattan\u2014which is pretty great as soon as we leave New York. But Jack\u2014Calvin\u2014gets ogled by every manner of man and woman passing through the station\u2014from the Madison Avenue trustafarians slumming it on the subway to the scrappy students from Bay Ridge; honestly, he could have his pick of bed partners if he ever took the time to look up at our faces.<\/p>\n

To confirm my theory, a quick glance in my compact mirror reveals the clownish bleed of my mascara below my eyes and a particularly ghoulish lack of color in the bottom half of my face. I reach up and attempt to smooth the tangle of brown strands that every other moment of my life are straight and lifeless, but have presently escaped the confines of my ponytail and defy gravity around my head.<\/p>\n

Lovely<\/em>, at present, I am not.<\/p>\n

Calvin\u2019s music returns, and it fills the quiet station in this echoing, haunting way that actually makes me feel even drunker than I thought I was. Why did I come here tonight? Why did I speak to him? Now I have to realign all these things in my brain, like his name not being Jack and his eyes having a defined color. The knowledge that he is Irish just about makes me feel crazy enough to go climb on his lap.<\/p>\n

Ugh. Crushes are the worst, but in hindsight a crush from afar seems so much easier than this. I should stick to making up stories in my head and watching from a distance like a reasonable creeper. Now I\u2019ve broken the fourth wall and if he\u2019s as friendly as his eyes tell me he is, he may notice me when I drop money in his case the next time, and I will be forced to interact smoothly or run in the opposite direction. I may be middle-of-the-pack when my mouth is closed, but as soon as I start talking to men, Lulu calls me Appalland, for how appallingly unappealing I become. Obviously, she\u2019s not wrong. And now I\u2019m sweating under my pink wool coat, my face is melting, and I\u2019m hit with an almost uncontrollable urge to hike my tights up to my armpits because they have slowly crept down beneath my skirt and are starting to feel like form-fitting harem pants.<\/p>\n

I should really go for it and just shimmy them up my waist, because other than one comatose gentleman sleeping on a nearby bench, it\u2019s just me and Calvin down here, and he\u2019s not paying attention to me anymore.<\/p>\n

But then the sleeping gentleman rises, zombielike, and takes one shuffling step toward me. Subway stations are awful when they\u2019re empty like this. They\u2019re caves for the leches, the harassers, the flashers. It isn\u2019t that late\u2014not even midnight on a Monday\u2014but I\u2019ve clearly just missed a train.<\/p>\n

I move to my left, farther down the platform, and pull out my phone to look busy. Alas, I should know that drunk and persistent men are often not swayed by the industrious presence of an iPhone, and the zombie comes closer.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s the tiny spike of fear in my chest or a draft passing through the station, but I\u2019m hit with the cloying, briny smell of mucus; the sour rot of spilled soda sitting for months at the bottom of a trash bin.<\/p>\n

He lifts a hand, pointing. \u201cYou have my phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turning, I give him a wide berth as I circle back toward the stairs and Calvin. My thumb hovers over Robert\u2019s phone number.<\/p>\n

He follows. \u201cYou<\/em>. Come here. You have my phone.\u201d Without bothering to look up, I say as calmly as possible,<\/p>\n

\u201cGet the hell away from me.\u201d<\/p>\n

I push Robert\u2019s name and hold the phone to my ear. It rings hollowly, one ring for every five of my pounding heartbeats.<\/p>\n

Calvin\u2019s music swells, aggressively now. Does he not see this person following me around the station? I have the absurd thought that it really is remarkable how deeply he gets in the zone while playing.<\/p>\n

The man starts this shuffling, lurching run in my direction and the notes tearing out of Calvin\u2019s guitar become a soundtrack for the lunatic chasing me down the platform.<\/p>\n

My tights keep me from running with any amount of speed or grace, but his clunky run speeds up, turns more fluid with confidence.<\/p>\n

Through the phone, I hear the tinny sound of Robert answering. \u201cHey, Buttercup<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHoly crap, Robert. I\u2019m at the\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

The man reaches out, his hand wrapping around the sleeve of my coat, jerking my phone away from my ear.<\/p>\n

\u201cRobert!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHolls?<\/em>\u201d Robert yells. \u201cHoney, where are you?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

I grapple, trying to hold on because I have the sickening sense that I\u2019m off balance. Dread sends a cold, sobering rush along my skin: the man is not helping me stay upright\u2014he\u2019s shoving <\/em>me.<\/p>\n

In the distance, I hear a deep shout: \u201cHey!\u201d<\/p>\n

My phone skitters along the concrete. \u201cHolland?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

It happens so fast\u2014and I guess things like this always happen fast; if they happened slowly I\u2019d like to think I\u2019d do something, anything<\/em>\u2014but one second I\u2019m on the nubby yellow warning line, and the next I\u2019m falling onto the tracks.<\/p>\n

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Preorder today<\/h3>\n