Heads of the Colored People(29)
“Guys,” Mike yelled toward the open van. “Jonathan, camera, now. Get the boom.”
Jonathan had been in the back seat playing a game on his phone, talking loudly to the others about how this pilot was never going to happen. Now he moved too slowly to catch much of it.
Ryan pulled french fries from the red carton, stuffing his mouth with them like a row of long yellow fangs. He threw some of the fries at Lisbeth, took small bites, and threw more.
Lisbeth was scream-crying. “Get that carcinogenic trash out of your mouth, Ryan, now.” Inedia’s face pressed against the car window, her mouth open and gulping, making circles of condensation.
“It’s not fruit, Ryan. What’s wrong with you? It’s not fruit!” Lisbeth shouted.
? ? ?
BACK IN THE car, Ryan asked Inedia if she was okay.
“Yes,” she said, sounding a little breathless, but her face was flush with life.
Ryan would call and check on Lisbeth in a few days, to see if she would accept his conditions for reconciliation, to say he tried, though he already knew the outcome.
? ? ?
MIKE HAD LOST Ryan, but his vision was clear now. With one of Lisbeth’s lovers they could reenact this scene; the show would go on, with this Lisbeth or another. The stuff passed right through you, even when you were full or sick, leaving more holes, a hunger. Of course the show would go on.
SUICIDE, WATCH
Jilly took her head out of the oven mainly because it was hot and the gas did not work independently of the pilot light. Stupid new technology. And preferring her head whole and her new auburn sew-in weave unsinged, and having no chloroform in the house, she conceded that she would not go out like a poet.
But she updated her status, just the same:
A final peace out
before I end it all.
Treat your life like bread,
no edge too small
to butter.
Jilly was not a poet or even an aspiring one. She just liked varying her posts as much as possible. She had 1,672 Facebook friends and 997 Twitter followers, and she collected them like so many merit badges. The beautiful mixed friend with the blond curls meant that pretty people liked Jilly, too. And being friends with the mahogany-colored guy with the enviable and on-trend tapered beard with all the followers on Instagram—the one who liked one of her baby pictures a year ago—was almost the same as having a fine black boyfriend when all the research and a popular video said it was a good thing black women already knew how to dance to “Single Ladies” because that was going to be their song forever.
Her friends included her mailman; five of the checkout boys at Stater Brothers on Riverside Avenue, three from Foothill in Fontana, and one from the grocer Ralphs in Rialto; all sixty-four of her mom’s friends from high school, many of whom had known her in utero; the podiatrist who removed the bursitis from her left big toe in seventh grade; her therapist from high school; her therapist from undergrad (her current therapist had a no-friending policy); all her high school teachers; the professor with whom she slept and two with whom she didn’t; her third-grade best friend; her birth buddy from the hospital, who had been born exactly one minute after her, and who had been particularly difficult to find since her name had changed; as many mutual friends as said yes; and countless people who’d sent her LinkedIn requests, despite her disdain for that particular networking ploy.
Jilly determined to wait at least four hours before checking the status of her farewell post so she wouldn’t look desperate, but then she remembered that she didn’t have long left, so she waited five minutes and checked her phone.
Four notifications:
JULIA WEINBERG, KAREN GRANT, AND 2 OTHER PEOPLE
RECENTLY LIKED YOUR STATUS.
JESSICA GIVEN [that was Jilly’s mom]
COMMENTED ON YOUR STATUS.
REMINDER: YOU HAVE 1 EVENT THIS WEEK.
Six more people had liked her other status, about a juice cleanse she was considering, from earlier in the day.
She didn’t know how to interpret the likes on her poem. Was it too cryptic? Were people happy she was saying goodbye, sanctioning her death? Jilly checked the third notification on the list. The Studio Center art show was on Friday, and she had already picked out an outfit. She drew her feet under her hips and sank deeper into the couch. She ignored the text message and two subsequent phone calls from her mother, who must have seen the poem and interpreted it properly. So it wasn’t too cryptic. She opened the clock app and set her phone timer to one hour, then got up and put her phone in the microwave, a trick she’d taught herself to keep from checking it obsessively, because the act of having to retrieve the phone was supposed to be such a bother that she’d get tired of doing it.
Since she was already in the kitchen, Jilly removed the pouch from the utility drawer—she liked calling it that, a utility drawer, though many of the things in it (the stubs of crayons too small to use, pennies stuck together, widowed locks and keys) were no longer useful—then removed the box cutter from the pouch. She sat back on the couch, trying to decide on the best place to be found with slit wrists. A bloody mess in the kitchen would make it look unplanned, her life taken abruptly in a fit of desperation. The shower, on full blast while she sat under its stream, would make less mess but look desperately premeditated. The bathtub, where the blood would pool—she couldn’t even think of the bathtub. She had seen Harold and Maude in a sociology class, and it scared her, all kidding aside. Most blood did, in fact. She put the knife back in its pouch and thought it a shame, because it was a cute knife and pouch, with matching kawaii cupcakes on the handle and flap.