Read an Excerpt
Attempted Chemistry
A Novel
By Jeff Gomez The Permanent Press
Copyright © 2002 Jeff Gomez
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2388-7
CHAPTER 1
Daniel likes to think of coffee as incense. He believes nothing makes a room smell better than the freshly brewed French roast he makes every morning, ground from beans he buys at a small market across from his favorite pizzeria up on St. Mark's Place, Nino's. And if the general aroma of the beverage isn't enough, he'll walk around the apartment with the pot, flicking up the plastic lid with his thumb as if pumping out perfume from an atomizer, making sure the smell permeates every pore of the room. He then likes to douse the empty sink with whatever is left in his cup, leaving a dark musty ring that will remind him that night of the coffee he had that morning.
His girlfriend, Eileen, has never witnessed this behavior, but she did wonder why the studio he used to live in always smelled so much like coffee. She prefers real incense, in either cone or stick format; scents that are exotic and, if they could speak, would have far-away accents: India and beyond. She does not consider the steep hills of Brazil much of an escape. At her old place, Daniel was always tripping over circular dishes that held sweet-smelling ash or else that teakwood tray in which she'd sometimes poke two sticks of incense at once. In fact, quite a few times he burned a nice-smelling hole in his foot. But that was all before yesterday, before they moved in with each other.
Daniel and Eileen now share a small one bedroom apartment in the West Village. The apartment, a third floor walk-up, is in a pre-war building with hardwood floors and a shower with little pressure and the personality of a sexual tease: sometimes hot, sometimes cold. The kitchen is a closet with a stove and two tin shoeboxes nailed to the wall for cupboards. There's only one counter, and it's hung low between the sink and a fridge that's a pony compared to the horse-sized refrigerators they had grown up with, she in suburban Baltimore and he in suburban Los Angeles. The suburbs had spoiled them with space. The bedroom takes itself literally, providing room for not much else than a bed. They managed somehow to wedge in a nightstand and dresser. At night, they'll wedge in themselves.
The move the day before had gone smoothly, or as smoothly as moves can possibly go when professionals are not involved and the roster of volunteers is made up of sundry co-workers, relatives, and the drafted acquaintances of attending friends. There was Anthony, a co-worker of Eileen's; Anthony's cousin, Chazz, the inevitable invitee with the truck: personality and vehicle borrowed for one day and then forgotten; and Keith, Daniel's friend from California, the one who had convincingly persuaded him a little more than seven months ago to leave Los Angeles for Manhattan.
Daniel had been living in the East Village, Eileen around Union Square. Neither of the apartments to be vacated had an elevator. There were nine combined flights to walk down, each with it's own inherent difficulties. Eileen's hallways were narrow and she had most of the furniture, which led to continuous arguments between Anthony and Chazz on how to un-parallel park the couch out of the cramped living room. Meanwhile, Daniel's stairs were wide but steep and most of his cargo was boxes overstuffed with books, bottom-heavy and threatening to burst. She had suggested he get rid of some of the books, that there would never be enough space for all of them in their apartment, but he insisted that as a writer he needed to be surrounded by words.
Earlier in the week Daniel had bought a disposable Styrofoam cooler from the K-Mart on Astor Place and he packed it yesterday with dry-ice and the ingredients for an elaborate and secret breakfast in bed. He also wanted to include a bottle of champagne, thinking that his and Eileen's new life was a ship whose castoff needed to be positively christened, but decided against it because he knew there'd be no room in the small cooler for so big a bottle. Now, the morning after the move, he reaches into the cooler and lifts out the various ingredients for his surprise meal.
Every muscle in his body aches from the day before; he can barely straighten himself out after crouching over. He needs another few hours of sleep and then maybe a hot bath or a massage, or both. Setting the package of bacon on the counter, he grins as he notices the pots and pans and spices he had laid out the evening before. Last night he had fought off Eileen's various questions, her asking exactly why did he have to find the salt, pepper and spatula that night, right then. Part of him wanted to tell her — and he almost did — but in the end he kept his secret. He wanted this to be a surprise.
Setting a brown carton of eggs on the counter, he catches his reflection in the Windexed door of the microwave. He notices that his brownish-blond hair, cut short on the sides and parted to the right on top, this morning is sticking up in horn-like clumps on both sides of his head. He runs a hand through his wild hair, trying to smooth it down. Daniel is amazed at how thin it has become over the past couple of years. He's only twenty-nine, but with the hair loss, looks older. His face is also puffy due to the lack of sleep, while his nose is red from spending so much time in the street the day before retrieving box after box. The day had been warmer than predicted and unusually hot for the city in late-April, which left the entire moving party more than a little sunburned.
In the bedroom, Eileen is slowly stirring herself awake. She rolls over and finds her bed is missing the lumpy presence of Daniel. She grins, thinking that the past month of planning and weeks of packing have been just a dream. She's back in her old apartment on Thirteenth Street. But then she opens her eyes to the unfamiliar surroundings: boxes everywhere, garbage bags filled with clothes, walls bare except for circles of white putty and tape on the window-frame from where the super was touching up as recently as the day before. The room still smells sourly of paint; it needs incense, but she figures her boyfriend will offer only coffee.
Eileen hears loud rattling in the kitchen and becomes angry, thinking that Daniel should have waited for her to wake up before beginning to unpack. She wonders, What's the rush?
"Compromise," she tells herself. "Compromise," she repeats, slowly rising out of bed. She sweeps her long black hair out of her face and sets it in a pile on top of her head, securing it with a purple plastic pin.
Once in the living room she notices the apartment smells sweet and smoky, like the Hickory Farms store her mom always dragged her to back in Maryland. The closer Eileen gets to the kitchen — she's now halfway through the living room, the air of which is dry and spicy; the bare skin on her arms feels like meat being cured — she hears both sizzling and crackling noises that she remembers from her youth.
"Oh, fuck," she sighs.
Eileen turns the corner to see Daniel at the stove, three burners flickering with high flames. The coffee-maker sits on the microwave, which is placed on the one counter and is surrounded by clumps of grounds. He startles at her presence and then quickly glances at a plastic tray on the table upon which are sitting two plates, each garnished with half a grapefruit but bare otherwise.
"Surprise," he says weakly.
"Yeah," she mumbles, noticing that he's wearing her old Georgetown T-shirt.
"Oh, I found this in the closet," Daniel says, looking down at the shirt that has obviously caught Eileen's attention. Over the face of the white, block letters is a smear of yellow egg-yolk and an oil slick of excess margarine. "I needed an apron and this thing was in the hall closet, so I just sort of figured ..."
Eileen slowly approaches.
"The reason it was in the hall closet, Daniel, is because I ran out of room in bedroom closet. I mean," she reaches out to touch the soiled shirt. Daniel's belly trembles behind the silk-screened front. "It's not like it's a rag or anything."
"Oops."
His excuse of an apology is punctuated by the popping of two slices of toast out of the toaster immediately to Eileen's right. She jumps.
Looking over at the smoking, blackened bread (the pink-hot coils inside the silver appliance beginning to cool and fade) she says, "What is all this?"
"Breakfast, sweetheart," Daniel tries to say brightly. "It was going to be in bed, but you surprised me."
He reaches past her for the toast, placing the slices on a small dish. He then holds up a jar of Smuckers jelly and a stick of real butter. She hasn't seen real butter since visiting her grandparents in Florida six years ago. It's more white than yellow.
"Which one?" he asks, slowly breaking into a smile and adding, "or both?"
Eileen rests against the wall behind her and raises a hand to her forehead, checking if it is she that is hot or if it is the temperature in the room from all of Daniel's inaccurately set appliances.
"Uh, neither. I don't even like toast."
"But, the other night ... you said you loved toast. You said you even have it as a snack sometimes, or with dinner."
"You believed that? I was just kidding. And I thought you were, too."
Answering with a hurt look instead of words, Daniel turns to the stove where four eggs are burning in a frying pan.
"Oh, fuck," he mumbles, grabbing for the handle of the pan. He tosses the rock-hard eggs into the sink where four others — burnt and with broken yolks — are also ruined. He then throws the frying pan onto the pile. Rather than just clean it and try again, he searches the boxes on the floor for yet another pan.
"Wow," Eileen says, noticing the stack of dirty dishes, pans, utensils, and a plastic spatula melted almost beyond recognition. "It looks like you've used almost every cooking apparatus we have. Should I unpack some more dishes, so you can dirty them, too?"
"Don't worry, there's one more frying pan. For the eggs," he replies, missing her point.
"No, it's just ... you know, most of these are mine." Eileen watches as Daniel places the latest frying pan over a rocket-engine flame. He melts a large pat of butter in the bat of an eye and then breaks into the pan four more eggs. They blacken and burn at the point of contact. "And I thought you said you could cook."
"I can," he says, distracted, trying to pry under the corners of the already browned eggs with a metal spatula turned hot from his earlier attempts. "I mean, most things. Eggs are just sort of, goddamn, tricky." He moves the frying pan to the back burner as the contents go up in smoke, the butter turning into a hard crust, the eggs scalded. "Anyway, that's it for the eggs. But, I've got bacon, and the toast. Well, bacon. And some grapefruit."
"Daniel, I'm a ... vegetarian," Eileen says, not sure what to believe anymore. Maybe if I went back to bed and woke up an hour from now and acted like none of this ever happened ... "You know that."
"Yeah, yeah," he replies quickly, as if he had expected this response and concocted an explanation. He grabs a package from the cooler and shoves it in her face. Her nose instantly recoils at the musty scent of the cured meat. "This is turkey bacon. You see? Jennie-O fat free turkey bacon. Ninety-seven percent lean. Of course, the downside is that it doesn't shrink or make any fat, so to get it juicy and not have it come out like a bunch of little leathery hides, you have to fry them in a bit of oil."
He steps out of the way to give Eileen a view of the dozen thin purple and brown strips with light streaks (from white meat since there's no fat) sizzling in a pan of what looks like half an inch of grease.
"Uh, is that lard? Because that's the same as —"
"No, no," Daniel cuts her off, as if he's thought of everything. This time he pokes a can of Crisco in her face.
"I still can't eat that, Daniel."
"But you said fish, and sometimes chicken." He thinks back to the conversation they have every few months, Daniel getting a refresher course on the rigors of her self-imposed diet. They've been dating for six months, which meant that he had heard this speech three times.
"Yeah, but that ..." She points with a hand that she'd rather use to clamp her nose. The kitchen smells like a diner, the air thick and smoggy with the fumes of the butter and bread and eggs. "I mean, I just can't ... Sorry."
Daniel looks around the kitchen, wondering what can be salvaged. He comes up empty.
"Then what do you eat for breakfast?"
She crosses the thin space and when she does he catches, even through the haze of the kitchen, a whiff of her rosy perfume on the back of her neck. The smell reminds him of why he's doing this.
From a box marked KITCHEN sitting atop the small refrigerator she pulls a box of granola cereal, and hands it to Daniel. He examines the cover which is decorated with just a photograph of a bowl filled with the trail mix-like product; no mascot, no cartoon characters, no toy inside. How can anyone call this cereal?
"You're serious?"
"Yes."
"But ... why?"
"Why, what? I like it. What's the big deal?"
"But when you used to spend the night at my apartment, I'd always run out and get bagels or some Danish or croissants, those ones with the butter and almonds and, I mean, you never mentioned granola." He says this as if the item were as absurd as eating plutonium for breakfast.
"Yeah, well ..." Eileen draws her small hands into the cuffs of her flannel pajama top. "That was during courtship. It was cute the way you always offered to rush out to the Sticky Fingers Bakery and bring back a few muffins. Your hair would be sticking up and you'd throw on a pair of old Levi's and you'd look adorable. It was fun that way. But now," she fingers the box in his hands, "this is real life. This is the way I am. Every day."
Daniel again looks over the wreckage of the kitchen: a dozen eggs and not one of them edible, the wasted bacon, the burnt toast, empty plates waiting for a meal that would never arrive. She probably doesn't even like grapefruit.
"Fine, have your stupid nature food." Daniel tosses the box to Eileen but, with her hands still inside her sleeves, she does not catch it. It falls on the ground with the rest of the boxes. "Eat your damn granola."
"Listen, Daniel, don't be like this."
"Like what? I planned and planned and it all got screwed up."
"So?"
"So?" He sighs. "So, just leave me alone. I've got to clean."
"I'm sorry."
"Sorry for being you? Don't be."
She tries to protest, but he nudges her out of the kitchen.
"Hey, wait, I —"
As Eileen is being forced into the living room, she sees something familiar on the counter.
"Is that my vase?"
Daniel stops shoving for a second.
"Huh?"
"My vase. Or rather, my mother's vase. No, my grandmother's vase. The Waterford crystal vase."
She keeps saying the word vase but it's rhyming with cause and not case, the way Daniel, a good California boy, would say it. He figures that's what you get when you date a girl from the East Coast.
"Oh, I thought it was, um ..."
Eileen lets out a shriek when she sees her expensive heirloom filled with orange juice, flakes of shredded pulp cruising the surface.
"I thought it was, you know, a pitcher."
"A pitcher?" Eileen screams, indecision in her voice. She can't decide whether to just yell at him outright or else quiz him as to why he was stupid enough to think the heavy, crystal vase was in fact meant to hold fruit juice. She makes a mental note to check the urn in which the ashes of her aunt are kept to make sure it hasn't been emptied and turned into a cookie jar.
"This time I'm sorry ... I guess."
"You guess?"
"Look, I was trying to do something nice ... For you."
"I know, I know, but still. The vase, the bacon, the eggs. I hate eggs."
Daniel screws his palm into his forehead, thinking, I just can't win, can I? If I would have served her a bowl of cereal she would have looked up at me and said, "Is that all I'm worth to you?"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Attempted Chemistry by Jeff Gomez. Copyright © 2002 Jeff Gomez. Excerpted by permission of The Permanent Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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