Matt and Jub's Glorious Day

Street lamps blaze with their electric harshness, igniting each of their heads with a singular beam of light as the three walk underneath them and up the hill to the nearest bus stop. The rest of the street is darkness.

Anticipation locks their tongues—Jub reaches for Elodie’s hand and squeezes it. She squeezes back, faintly, hesitantly. She slips her hand out of his after a second, giving him a curt smile before looking away and composing herself once again.

Matt keeps stride on Jub’s other side, twiddling, twiddling, twiddling his toothpick. His heart is a freight train. Looking at his friend, he wishes that they’d decided to sleep in.


--


On their seventh day of unemployment, Matt woke up with a hole in his boxers. Probably the result one of the crawling, less visible inhabitants of the apartment, which was his first thought and the first of many things he ignored that day.

Light peeped through the shutters and shot him right in the eyes when he sat up. He blinked.

The calendar page was taped across the room from him, curling, crinkled, old, and glorious.

“Jub,” he said, swinging his feet off the bed. “Get up.”

Jub was sleeping on the swirly mat beside the bed. They’d had a couch for ages but Jub insisted that he’d gotten used to the floor and wouldn’t be able to sleep on something that soft. It didn’t bother Matt a tremendous amount, anyway; Jub always made opinions and decisions with very sudden intensity. They’d been reading buddies in the second grade, hadn’t spoken to each other since, until Jub appeared at Matt’s dorm room the day he was moving out, despite the fact that they hadn’t talked since attending the same college either.

“Hey,” he’d said, “Remember me? Jub? I was your reading buddy. We read Shrek before the movie came out.”

And six years later, he was still there.

“Jub.” Matt kicked his back with bare feet before leaving him to explore the closet.

Jub rolled over, wearing yesterday’s clothes, snorting loudly before propping himself up on his elbows. “What’s the date? Is it spring yet?”

Matt rolled his eyes, finding a moderately unwrinkled shirt and threw it at Jub. “The date. Wear that.”

Jub’s brain rebooted. His thoughts squirmed a little, accommodating to the words, figuring out the meaning. Hmm. Today. The date. The date. Which would mean—

Jub had the shirt on a second after, stumbling over to the calendar page for a better look while simultaneously buttoning his pants.

Truthfully, neither of them needed it; they’d been on mental countdown since the day they’d circled February 19th and written the day’s events below it. But it was part of the ritual, holding it, reading it, and had been an assurance that their last day at The Birds, the apartment complex from hell, would actually come.

Jub cleared his throat. They glanced at each other.

“Curry for breakfast?” Jub crinkled his nose.

“Yup. Let’s go.”



--


The hill gets steeper and Matt’s breath hikes up with it, the toothpick bobbing at the corner of his mouth when he begins to pant. He glances over at Jub, who’s taken a break from staring at Elodie in favor of watching the street.

They hadn't cleaned their room. Matt thinks over everything they'd left behind, suddenly mourning the fact that he wouldn't have his lumpy mattress anymore or that pair of socks, the ones Jub and him had always left under the bed.

Leaving everything behind had seemed theatrical, almost poetic, when they were planning it all those weeks ago. Not so now.



--



The elevator took too long to pick them up, its doors too long to open, and its light was too bright, music too loud—Matt let out a deep breath, blinking hard and focusing on moving rather than thinking. Apprehension. Uneasiness. There’s a little empty spot in his head or his heart—can’t tell which—and it was gaping at him again. He wasn’t ever sure where it came from. Sometimes he thought about it, that maybe the part that used to be there was taken by a mother that lost interest in him, or the generally lonely pre-Jub existence, or maybe he was born without it and it was the cause of his perpetual forgetfulness—nothing that he thought was too serious, or told himself was too serious; sometimes forgetting to brush his teeth, or the words he’d been waiting to say, or a restaurant bill, or anything out of routine, or pants.

And if he thought about it too much, it scared him. So he chose to forget it now.

He fumbled through his pockets for a toothpick and quickly stuck it between his lips. It flapped up and down when he talked. “There she is.”

He nodded towards the desk in the lobby, but he already knew Jub was looking.

Her.

By the doorway was the woman—brown, greasy hair strung in thin riglets around her neck, tired, and a head kept perpetually down, today staring at the carpet while the apartment landlord talked at her about money.  She never kept eye contact, never smiled, never dropped posture, and almost never left the building. Most times, she paid somebody else to get her groceries.

This wasn’t held as that unusual at The Birds. The apartment building was cursed; all the inhabitants had once been aspiring rock stars or artists or writers, and The Birds was where their dreams came to die, a cage which the tenants paid rent for.

She didn’t seem much like an ex-rocker. Or an artist. Or anything at all, at least not to Matt.

Jub, however, was convinced he was in love with her.

Jub’s heart dropped and jiggled like fallen cranberry sauce and he stared at her openly, narrowly avoiding running into the exit’s doorpost on his way out.

“You’re such a creep,” said Matt, grinning.

“Shut up.” Jub shoved his hands in his pockets, wiggling his middle finger out of a hole in the right one.

“Soon.”

“Shut up.” Jub took a deep breath, blowing out through his nostrils. “I know.”


-

Curry was Matt’s ice cream for breakfast and there was a special singular curryhouse in town that made the best. As a whole, it was a mixture of ghetto and quaint, the structure suggesting quaintness and the inhabitants suggesting otherwise. Graffiti has been scrubbed and sprayed over time and time again on the flanks of the building and the awning of the doorway was crumbling stone. It’d been wanting a remodel for years. It wouldn’t be getting one soon.

They entered and the room was sauna house thick with smells. The waiters were every ethnicity but Asian, lounging on the counter and snapping clumsily to attention when approached by the visitors.

The manager leant against the counter as well, unfazed, a thick woman with hair pulled back into a painful ponytail that seemed to stretch her eyes. She raised her hand briefly, Hitler-style, pointing nowhere. “Hey,” she said, eyes slitted, “place isn’t open. Get out of here.”

Jub raised a finger authoritatively, waiting for the manager to interrupt him before he could speak, instead met with silence. He slowly lowered it. Matt takes the wheel.
“We’re moving out today.”

The manager sneezed like a gorilla. She gets up, moves around the counter with an entourage of waiter’s behind her, impassive. “Oh yeah?” Her eyebrows crept up slowly. “Like I haven’t heard that one before. Nobody leaves The Birds. Not for very long, anyways.”

Matt wanted to respond but the words circled every fear in his head, silencing him.

She was about to dismiss them, turning away, when Jub said, “Hey!”

The waiters and her looked back.

Again, nobody was stopping him. His stomach flip-flopped. “It’s true, though,” he said, lamely. Then, after a quick look at Matt, “And we’re gonna eat curry.”

“No, you’re not. If you take another step, I’m kicking you out myself.”

The manager never budged. This was the woman who could just as easily shout at a grown man for making a mess in her restaurant as a baby.  

And when they advanced, she kept her word.


-


Matt passed Jub his hanky, watching him dab actual tears from his eyes, a purple spot forming on his chin from when he fell over a table on their way out. They slumped against the graffiti ridden wall in unison, right below the eloquent words, “tubey ass”.

“Hey, man,” said Matt, taking the toothpick from his mouth and holding it between two fingers like a cigarette, “It’s not a big deal.”

Jub shakes his head. “It’s not just like that. You know it’s not just like that.” He hugs his legs, resting a chubby chin on the hardness of his kneecaps. “I’m sorry—“

The door slammed open and one of the jingling-bells was flung off its string. There was a lot of shouting from inside the restaurant, which wasn’t unusual. However, what was unusual was the manager coming out of it, seething. She looked pained.

In her angry, desolate cerebrum, she thought of screaming. Instead, she tossed a container of curry at Jub, who caught it haphazardly and only vaguely noticed when it dripped onto his shins.

“Just get out of here.” Grumbling. She didn’t look at them. The doors jangled in angry chorus as she slammed the restaurant doors behind herself when she reentered.  

It was the nicest thing she’d ever said.



--


Weather’s cold. Wind picks up and Matt zips up his hoodie. Jub looks at him, breaking the solemnity to tug the strings on either side of it and close the hood up around Matt’s face. He laughs, quietly, getting a funny look from Elodie.

Matt grins a little, letting himself laugh for a second and then recoiling when he realizes it sounds fake.



--


When they returned to The Birds, Jub was carrying all the groceries—he’d insisted he be the one to do it— and Matt opened the door for him on his way in.

The lobby was empty, so they headed to the elevator and punched the button for floor three. It smelled like wet pennies, and the lights flickered when it started, but they were lifted.

A light above the door dinged with each floor and Matt nudged Jub when he saw him shaking.

“Hey,” he smiled, forced but well meant, “Calm down. You know what you’re going to say?”

Of course he did. He’d known since he’d first seen her. Jub nodded.

Matt was acutely aware that all this could be seen as stalker behavior, but he hated making Jub cry so went along with it, hoping that the woman was kinder than she seemed. Maybe she’d let him down kindly. And then, maybe, he’d be too discouraged to leave and they’d move some other day—

The doors opened up loudly and Jub limped out with the bags threatening to spill out of his arms. He shook his head when Matt offered help and gestured for him to move farther down the hallway when he positioned himself in front of her door.

There was a moment of fumbling, and then, “Matt.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you knock for me? The bags and stuff.” Jub swallowed. “Also, I feel like throwing up.”

Matt hurried over, giving Jub a good pat on the back. “Don’t do that.” He was about to knock but paused, weighing options in his head. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes.”

Matt looked at the door. “What if she’s not what you think?”

Jub shrugged, but he was getting shaky again. “We’ll see. Knock before I drop everything.”

He did, and then he backed down the hallway, offering Jub a thumbs up when he glanced back. His toothpick gravitated to his hand.

The door opened.  It was a man.

The uncomfortable silence that followed was broken only by the occasional pop of the man’s gum. He was tall but so thin and reedy Matt was sure Jub could tap him and he’d fall over. His face was gaunt, the cheeks puckered in, and after a moment he said, “What do you want?”

Jub was deer-in-the-headlighted, clutching the grocery bags like teddy bears.

“I said what—“

“Are you the lady who lives here?”

Matt fought the urge to hit his head against the wall.

“I mean,” stuttered Jub, “is there a lady here?”

The guy popped his gum again, brows drawing together before he laughed and shouted back into the apartment, “ELODIE!”

There wasn’t any sound following the name but the woman was somehow conjured unto the spot, appearing at the doorway a second later. The man yanked her in front of himself, chuckling when she flinched and shrugging when she glared.

“Be quick,” he said to her, moving back into the apartment. “And tell them they can’t stay. You’re busy.”

She gripped the doorframe, harder and harder and harder until her knuckles were white. Brown hair curtained her eyes. She waited.

“Oh,” said Jub, sheepish. “Maybe this is a bad time?”

Elodie stared at the ground.

Jub continued nervously, shakily, “Or not. I got you your groceries.”

She looked at the bags in silence, releasing a hand from the doorframe to touch them lightly, and then looked up, tucking a greased strand of hair behind her ear. The skin around her eyes was dark and red.

It was at this moment that Matt felt more like a Girl Scout than he’d ever felt before, and that, perhaps, this was over their heads. His forehead throbbed and he twiddled his toothpick with increasing fervor between his fingers, staring hard at the wall opposite him.

“Elodie.” Jub tested the name. The next words were whispered. “I’m leaving tonight, and I wanted to ask if you’d come with me.”

The words have the sudden impact of a cartoon piano, whatever else Jub was saying and the scene around him suddenly swirling into an oblivion filled with one word.

Leaving.

They were leaving.

It was an easy thing to think about when they hadn’t set a date to go. When it was just “we’ll be out soon” and “next apartment won’t have so many rats”. Even when they had set the date, Matt had felt like they were bound to be stopped by something. It’d always been that way.

Now?

The bus schedule was in his pocket. The money too. He looked around— the hallways of the building are paint peels and carpet that looks like it’d been shaved off a muppet. He didn't like it. But it was where he lived.

He shoved his hand in his pocket and fumbled around with the wad of money, taking it out and observing, squishing it and hearing it crinkle.

Looking up, he saw Elodie nod, grabbing Jub’s arm and nodding again, furiously. Jub looked paralyzed. When she disappeared back into her room, he was smiling wildly, looking at Matt with an expression of obscene joy. Matt gave a thumbs up, suddenly uncomfortable with himself and not realizing any other way to support a friend who’d been stalking the same girl for half a decade.

The trashcan’s in the corner of his vision. Jub was still waiting by the door.  

Maybe Elodie wouldn't be able to come. They could leave later. When they were more ready.

Elodie came out the door when he was right by the trashcan, wad of money in hand.

“What’re you doing?” Jub’s smile faltered.

Matt looked up and grinned, eyes darting from Elodie with her pre-packed suitcase and Jub with his hands still gripping groceries. “Thinking.” He handed the money to Jub, forcibly giving it him and then shoving his hands back into their respective pockets because they were shaking too hard.

T.V. voices streamed out from within the apartment, pockmarked with static and bad reception. A soap opera.

"Elodie!" The man shouted, a small bout of irritation snaking into his voice. "Get back in here now!"

Elodie shivered. She motioned for them to be quiet, and together they tiptoed towards the elevator, leaving the open apartment behind.  



--



They reach the bus stop at the top of the hill, collecting around its empty bench before taking a seat in ceremonious unison. They wait.

Each second is stretched and weighed upon them; Jub’s leg bounces uncontrollably, Elodie picks at her nails, and Matt’s toothpick breaks in two just as he gets up.

“Jub,” he says, head titled upward, staring very hard at nothing, “Don’t you think it’s a bit of a bad night to leave?”

“What?”

Elodie says nothing, flicking a fingernail away and glancing at Jub.

“It looks like it might rain.” Matt looks down, kicks the ground. His heart rate spikes and he feels like crying. “I don’t know.”

Jub gets up slowly, trying not to act too confused. He walks over to Matt and places a hand on his arm but Matt rolls his shoulder away, hunching inwardly.

“I can’t do this, Jub. I can’t.” Breathing hard, Matt wraps his arms around himself. His eyes sting. The cold air presses itself on every square inch of his skin, seeping in through the pores and touching his bones. “Let’s wait, okay?” He turns to his friend, eyes wide, and the panic he’d been suppressing since he’d woken up in the morning is quickly revealing itself.

It doesn’t register in Jub’s head. “We made a plan.” He looks at Matt and smiles, as if this’ll fix the problem. “Don’t worry. We’ll just stick with it—“

“Don’t you get it?” Matt’s voice is rising and suddenly he’s angry, very angry, so angry that he pushes Jub away and shouts, “I can’t! This wasn’t my idea. It was never my idea. You did this.”

The bus is coming—coming up the other side of the hill, chugging.

“The plan doesn’t know what’s coming next, and neither do we.” He’s gaining speed. “We could be mugged tomorrow, or run over, or maybe somebody on that bus is gonna shoot you the second you get inside. Things are messed up. The whole world is messed up. There’s no point.”

The bus pulls up, front beams spotlighting them soliloquy-style. Jub’s face crumples. “Matt, you hated The Birds.”

Matt laughs one hard ha and looks away because the tears in his eyes are spilling over and dripping off his jawline. “At least I know what I’m doing there. And what are you doing?” He nods towards Elodie again, who is mesmerized with her own feet. “You don’t love her. You barely know her.”

“Stop it.”

“No.”

There had always been this. Matt had always said things, and Jub had always done them, but there’d always been this part of Jub that said Matt would say more than he could handle and this was it.

The bus doors open, light from its inside spilling out onto the street. The bus driver shouts for them to hurry up.

“We have to go.” Jub’s voice cracks.

“No,” Matt sniffs, angrily dries his face with his arm. He gives Elodie a pointed look and she shrinks back on instinct. “You have to go. You’re leaving me.”

Jub turns away, offering Elodie his hand and pulling her off the bench when she takes it. “I thought you were coming with us.”

“You did this on purpose.”

“You’re just afraid, Matt.” Jub’s crying is more like a puppydog’s, and much more common for him, arriving quick and fast and warm. “Just come with us.”

Matt watches Elodie get in silently, and then Jub as he hangs around the door, ignoring the driver’s irritated cursing. “Please. I need you too.”

Silence.

Everything’s choking Matt and he shakes his head. “No. You stay. You stay and she’ll be okay and we’ll be okay and things’ll be okay.”

“I have to do this. Please, come. You’re my best friend.”

Nothing. Matt shakes his head again, shaking and laughing in angry staccato until he’s sure Jub’s stopped waiting. Jub knows when to stop.

The doors close. The bus rumbles, the engine drowsy, and it shakes and shivers down the lane, away from Matt faster and faster down the side of the hill he’d been climbing just a minute ago.

He sits on the bench for a few hours. The hours tick, three men pass by, two more buses.

And then he goes home.