A couple of days after Dawn started her new job, Beth came home to find Tom moping.

  ‘Still here?’ she said.

  ‘I’m here, but where’s my so-called girlfriend? At work as usual. I sometimes think I miss her, but when she’s here, I always wish she were somewhere else.’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to like the person you’re dating?’

  ‘I guess.’ Tom pulled a piece of apricot custard tart out of his bag and handed it to Beth.

  ‘Thanks. Not to change the subject, but has anyone dared open the fridge?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tom said. ‘It’s OK in there. A little mouldy but we wiped it.’

  Beth blinked. Wiped?

  ‘There’s cold water in a bottle.’

  She opened the door cautiously. It was a heavy, old-fashioned fridge, large enough for a Thanksgiving turkey and ten pounds of potatoes, with nothing inside but a bottle of water and half a lime. Beth poured cold water into a glass.

  ‘It’s too fucking hot in here,’ Tom said. ‘I can’t stand it. Let’s go somewhere air-conditioned.’

  ‘I’m a bit …’ She didn’t like to say broke, but she was. They hadn’t been paid yet.

  ‘I’ll pay,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. You’re not exactly raking it in.’

  ‘I have a trust fund,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘You actually do?’

  ‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘No, just kidding. Come on. We’ll go someplace cheap.’

  ‘OK.’ Anything to get out of this sweat box.

  They went to a no-frills Thai place around the corner and got a table for two. The waiter appeared before they’d picked up their menus. Quick service, freezing temperatures. Maximum turnover.

  ‘Two red curry noodle soups,’ Tom said, and turned to her. ‘That OK? Lots of chilli. Keeps you cool.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Plus, it’s the best thing on the menu. You want a beer?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Two Thai beers,’ he said to the waiter, and to Beth, ‘I’ll drink yours.’

  The waiter went away leaving an awkward silence.

  ‘You’re great company,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Ever heard of small talk?’

  ‘Small talk?’ She frowned at him. ‘What are you, my great-aunt?’

  He looked glum and said nothing for a long moment. ‘Barely July and already I’m having the worst summer of my life.’

  Then his hand was on her arm. She stared at it.

  ‘How come you haven’t got a boyfriend?’

  ‘Too ugly, obviously.’

  ‘You’re not bad-looking.’

  She moved her arm. ‘Wow, that’s pretty much the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ He shook his head. ‘God, women are complicated.’

  ‘What, all of them? All women?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Their food arrived.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you do something about your dead-end relationship instead of complaining that all women are the problem.’

  ‘You mean break up with Dawn?’

  She put down her spoon. ‘I don’t know, Tom. I don’t know anything about you. But it’s a thought, surely. You two aren’t exactly couple of the year.’

  ‘I didn’t bring you here for advice. I brought you for the air-con.’

  ‘It’s not advice, it’s just idle observation. I’m telling you what I see. And it’s enough to put anyone off ever having a relationship. With anyone. Ever.’

  ‘OK. Sorry I spoke.’

  They ate in silence for a few minutes.

  Beth gave in. ‘Why is this the worst summer of your life?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘Not to me.’

  ‘I can’t explain. We’d be here all night.’ He slurped his noodles loudly. It was annoying.

  She stared at him and he stopped.

  He frowned. ‘You eighteen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Going to college in September?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘So, this is the first time you’ve lived away? First day of the rest of your life. Sex with whoever you want. Bet you feel old.’

  ‘Ancient.’

  ‘You better find a boyfriend soon. Get yourself some action.’

  Beth put down her spoon and stood up. ‘Thanks for dinner, Tom. I’m going home.’

  ‘Joke!’

  She didn’t even feel particularly angry, just chilled and sweaty and exasperated. Tom drove her insane. Sometimes he was fine, nice even, but most of the time he was an asshole.

  She arrived home tired and sweaty, trudged up the stairs, unlocked the door and turned on her fan in a futile attempt to budge the near-solid volume of heat. After a cool shower she began to feel shivery, took the last two aspirin in the bottle and went to bed, waking from a heavy feverish sleep sometime later to what sounded like tapping on her bedroom door. She wasn’t sure whether she was awake or asleep, but either way, she ignored it and it stopped.

  11

  The fever had full hold of her by five the next morning. She woke up shivering with steam rising from her skin, desperate to get cool and warm at once. Her feet were cold, her head hot and stuffed with straw. Dreams hallucinated their way into real time so she couldn’t tell if she was asleep, awake, or floating in limbo. Her body hovered up near the ceiling. She hoped Tom or Dawn would come in to see why she hadn’t gone to work, but they didn’t, and by supreme force of will she managed to crawl to the telephone and inform Jeanne that she wasn’t coming in.

  ‘You don’t sound good,’ Jeanne said. ‘Take some aspirin and stay in bed.’

  She poured a glass of water and went back to bed with the fan blowing directly at her face but periodically had to pull socks and a sweatshirt on to stop the shivering. Ten minutes later it was wet towels again to quench her burning chest.

  On her way to the bathroom, she ran into Dawn.

  ‘Holy shit, what’s wrong? You look fucking terrible.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Hope I don’t get it. I’ll get you something, some … What do you want?’

  ‘Only if you’re going out. Orange juice maybe? And more aspirin.’

  ‘Christ,’ Dawn said. ‘Your pyjamas are soaked – don’t you have another pair?’ Dawn rummaged around in her room and came back with a Snoopy sleep shirt. ‘Take this. At least it’s dry.’

  The day passed in a kaleidoscope of fractured dreams. She woke in a desperate state, hot, dehydrated and urgently thirsty but too weak even to reach down for the glass by the bed. Her skin hurt and her bones ached with cold. Another time-slip and her limbs were too heavy to move, her dreams psychedelic. In one dream, Tom was laying cool hands on her skin.

  Tom was laying cool hands on her skin. ‘Shall I call your parents?’ he asked. ‘You’re boiling hot and I’d hate for you to die alone.’

  ‘I’m not dying.’ Her voice was barely a whisper. Why couldn’t he be serious even for a second?

  ‘Maybe not, but you can never be sure. Is your neck stiff? Does the light sear your eyeballs? Are you scared of water?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Not rabies then,’ he said. ‘Or meningitis. Go back to sleep. If you’re not better in a day or two, I’ll call someone. A medic. A witch-doctor.’

  She closed her eyes, but her eyeballs grated against the lids and ached so much she opened them again. ‘Could you get me some ice if we have any? Please? And aspirin?’

  He brought her the contents of an entire tray of ice cubes wrapped in one of his T-shirts and proceeded to smash it against the floor.

  ‘Tom, please.’ The noise made her head clang with pain.

  ‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Just trying to crush the cubes. Here.’ He handed her the ice, two aspirin and a glass of water.

  ‘Thank you.’ The ice quenched the fire in her head and she sighed with relief. It felt wonderful until the heat of the room and her skin turned it into a clammy puddle on her bed.

  The following morning at eleven, the phone rang. Incapable of getting up, she imagined drifting across the room to answer it. Who could it be? Had her parents got wind of the fact that she was at death’s door? She imagined a doctor asking, ‘Can you still feel your hands?’ After a long time, the ringing stopped.

  At intervals she sipped tepid orange juice, the glass topped with a book to stop cockroaches swimming in it. When it ran out, she walked slowly to the kitchen for water, swaying and holding on to the wall for support.

  The phone rang again and she picked it up. ‘Hello,’ she croaked.

  ‘Wow,’ said the voice at the other end. ‘You sound terrible.’

  Terrible seemed to be something everyone could agree on. ‘Hey, Edie. How’s work?’

  ‘Missing you, that’s for sure. Some guy on the city desk asked me out for a drink. Do you think I should go?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The kind of good-looking one I did the photo search for last week.’

  ‘He’s got to be forty.’

  ‘Sure, but a date’s a date. I don’t get asked out much.’

  Beth groaned. ‘I don’t care what you do. I’m way too sick to care.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re alive,’ Edie said. ‘Can I come visit tomorrow? After work?’

  Her head ached. ‘I don’t know. It’s too hot. Can we talk in the morning?’

  ‘Sure. Feel better.’

  A few hours later Dawn stuck her head into the room. ‘I’m going out. You want something? Jello? Ice cream? What do sick people like?’

  The pain in her chest made swallowing difficult. And she wasn’t hungry. ‘Ice cream maybe. Thank you. You want some … ?’ She scrambled around feebly for her wallet.

  Dawn waved. ‘Go back to bed.’

  When Beth woke it was dark and her head ached less than before. The apartment was sweltering. She turned the fan back on, shuffled through to the kitchen and checked the freezer. Caramel Swirl ice cream was shoved into a small cavern in the frost. Groaning, she leaned her head into the compartment, imagined crawling in or having a freezer big enough to accommodate her whole body. She took the carton back to bed, pressing it on her burning face and chest to soften it. Although only able to manage a few spoonfuls, it tasted delicious. When she woke again at 2 a.m., the liquid remains of the ice cream beside her bed were swarming with cockroaches. Thousands of them. She felt like screaming but instead sobbed and sobbed until, exhausted, she fell asleep.

  Later that morning, she got a garbage bag from the kitchen and used it to pick up the leftover ice cream, wanting to throw up as she knotted the top so its inhabitants couldn’t escape, stuffed it down the garbage chute and hoped never to have to think of it again.

  The effort exhausted her and she slept on and off in a fog of peculiar visions, cockroaches and nightmarish images from her job, people shouting that she’d ruined everything, her parents saying she was too young to leave home, a train crash, the cars split open with insects pouring from them. She woke up mid-afternoon, sweating and thoroughly uncomfortable, her bed damp, her sheets grubby. But the fever was gone. When Edie called she told her to come after work.

  Beth showered and dressed in a loose shirt, stripped the sheets off her bed and remade it. Air from the fan gave the illusion of a breeze. She felt human for the first time in days.

  Edie arrived wearing her wool beret in the searing heat as a statement of corporeal indifference. She lugged a Zabar’s bag, which she unpacked on to the coffee table: a cardboard container of matzoh ball soup, a corned beef sandwich, two bottles of seltzer, a jar of half-sour pickles, half a dozen bagels, some cream cheese and a large carton of cut fruit.

  ‘It’s a mixed bag,’ Edie said from the wooden folding chair. She took in the room with a blank expression.

  ‘No, this is amazing,’ Beth croaked. ‘There’s way too much food but I’m starving. You have some.’ Edie took half the corned beef sandwich.

  The salty crunch of a half-sour pickle sent Beth into a kind of ecstasy. If you didn’t eat for days, food tasted psychedelic.

  Edie moved on to the tiny sofa next to Beth and told her about her date with the guy from the city desk. ‘We practically had sex in the bar,’ she said. ‘He was ridiculously up for it, but then it turns out he has a pregnant wife, and that put me off.’

  ‘Don’t know why. Edie, please sit over there. It’s too hot to be near you.’

  ‘Don’t push me away. I need love.’ She tried to snuggle up and put her head on her friend’s shoulder.

  Beth pushed her off, and with a sigh, Edie relocated to the folding chair. ‘I’m way too sick to give love,’ Beth said. ‘Is he even nice?’

  ‘Nice?’ Edie thought about it. ‘How nice can he be, having sex in a bar with me while his pregnant wife’s at home? Anyway, it’s hard to measure niceness when someone’s really interested in you. They seem nice because they want to buy you drinks and have sex with you. That in itself is nice.’

  She had a point.

  Tom arrived half an hour later and Edie offered him the other half of her sandwich.

  ‘Oh God, no.’

  ‘No offence, Tom works in a deli,’ Beth said. ‘Italian, but still.’

  Edie nodded. ‘I should go, but maybe see you tomorrow? It’s totally awful without you. No one to talk to except Oliver and New Wave Dan. And pregnant-wife guy. But maybe I won’t talk to him anymore if you disapprove. I’m not doing anything you disapprove of ever again. Starting today.’

  Beth rolled her eyes. ‘Ow,’ she said, because it hurt. ‘Don’t be weird.’

  ‘I’ll try. I want you to be proud of me.’

  ‘You’re screwing with my head and I’m too sick to cope. Go home.’

  ‘OK. Wait, I have a card for you.’

  ‘A card?’

  ‘Someone left it on my desk. Open it, who’s it from?’

  Beth opened the envelope, on which her name was written, and pulled out the card. It was made from folded copy paper. On the front was a drawing of a red heart with a thermometer run through it like an arrow. Inside it just said Get better, and was signed with an ‘O’. Oliver. Her own heart flickered.

  Edie shook her head. ‘So inappropriate.’

  ‘Go home.’ Beth pointed at the door.

  ‘Yes, OK, OK. Get better soon. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks for the food.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And thank Oliver for me.’

  ‘Gay Oliver.’

  ‘Go!’

  Drained by the visit, Beth put everything in the fridge and went back to bed. After a while Tom knocked on her bedroom door, came in and sat on the bed.

  ‘What’s up with your friend? She’s kind of strange.’

  ‘Nothing’s up.’

  ‘She’s cool though. Something about her.’

  ‘You could hit on her. Your girlfriend won’t mind.’

  ‘I haven’t seen my girlfriend in like a week.’

  ‘That must be devastating for you.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You think she’s trying to tell you something by working nights?’

  ‘Maybe. Hey, you look better.’ He put a hand on her forehead. ‘How’s this supposed to feel?’

  ‘Go away, Tom. I need sleep.’

  ‘You want anything?’

  ‘No.’ And then, nicer, ‘Thanks.’ He was a jerk, but she was pretty sure he didn’t mean to be.

  He went out. She turned her fan to face the bed and fell into a deep sleep.

  12

  Edie called the following lunchtime.

  ‘I’m not coming in today,’ Beth said. ‘I got up, had a shower and felt so bad I went back to bed. Jeanne was nice but I feel really guilty. Worst intern ever.’

  ‘I didn’t call about work. I called to see if you want to come stay at my place. It’s way nicer than yours and air-conditioned. I’m on my own for the summer and company would be amazing.’

  ‘You think my place is a slum.’

  ‘Obviously. No offence. So, what do you think? I’ve got plenty of room.’

  Beth’s instinct was to say No, I couldn’t possibly accept, but thank you very much for offering. ‘Wait, is this a real offer? For the whole summer? Are you serious?’

  ‘Totally.’

  ‘But what about your parents?’

  ‘They’re in East Hampton. They’ll be there till September. And they’ll like that I have company. My mother’s always going on about how I don’t have enough friends.’

  ‘God, she sounds horrible.’

  ‘You have no idea.’

  Beth hesitated. Was she allowed to say yes? No money had been mentioned. Would she be expected to pay? If not, it was too big a favour. But …

  ‘I could give you my salary for rent.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I don’t want any rent. I don’t pay any.’

  Beth was silent.

  ‘Don’t you want to come?’

  ‘Of course I want to come. But it seems like such an imposition. How could I ever pay you back?’

  ‘Just stop talking, hang up the phone, pack your bag and come up tonight. Really. Let’s stop discussing it.’

  ‘What if we don’t get along?’

  ‘We do get along, that’s the whole point. Do you think I’d ask you to move in if we didn’t get along?’

  ‘Wow. Wow. I mean, thank you. Look, if it doesn’t work out, you can always ask me to—’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Beth. Now look, a taxi seems expensive but get one. No way should you be on public transport in your condition.’

  ‘In my condition? What am I, pregnant?’

  ‘Are you paying attention?’

  ‘Yes. OK.’

  ‘So, I’ll see you later? After work? I’ll leave early.’

  ‘OK, yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Here’s the address.’ Beth scribbled it down. ‘And get a cab. Promise?’

  ‘Promise. Thank you. Thank you.’

  Beth hung up. Across the room she could see a cockroach climbing the wall. Living in this apartment was bad enough; having the flu in it was monstrous.

  Edie’s offer felt like the commutation of a jail sentence. She imagined living on the Upper West Side with her new best friend. And air conditioning. Everyone said the heat was going to last for weeks.